Crossword Solver

How to use it

Say you have a nine-letter answer, you know it starts with C and has a W seventh. Enter C??????W? and the solver lists every word that fits, commonest first — because the word a setter used is almost always the ordinary one.

If you have no letters at all, type a distinctive word from the clue instead. Searching for sheltered water for ships finds HARBOUR without any letters to go on.

Both together is strongest: the clue narrows the meaning and the pattern narrows the shape.

What it will not do

This searches definitions, so it answers straight clues well and cryptic ones badly. A cryptic clue hides its answer in wordplay — an anagram, a hidden word, a charade — and no definition search is going to see through that. For those, the letters you already have from the crossing entries are worth more than the clue is.

Rather solve one?

There is a new crossword here every day, free to play and free to print, and the answers to every one of them if you would rather just know.