Free Printable Crossword Puzzles

What is a Crossword Puzzle?

A crossword is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares with numbers on the corners, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of clues. Each white square is typically filled with one letter, while the black squares are used to separate entries. The first white square in each entry is typically numbered to correspond to its clue.

Crosswords commonly appear in newspapers and magazines. The earliest crosswords that resemble their modern form were popularized by the New York World in the 1910s. Many variants of crosswords are popular around the world, including cryptic crosswords and many language-specific variants.

Crossword construction in modern times usually involves the use of software. Constructors choose a theme (except for themeless puzzles), place the theme answers in a grid which is usually rotationally symmetric, fill in the rest of the grid, and then write clues.

A person who constructs or solves crosswords is called a "cruciverbalist". The word "cruciverbalist" appears to have been coined in the 1970s from the Latin roots crucis, meaning 'cross', and verbum, meaning 'word'.

History

The phrase "cross word puzzle" was first written in 1862 by Our Young Folks in the United States. Crossword-like puzzles, for example Double Diamond Puzzles, appeared in the magazine St. Nicholas, published since 1873. Another crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica. It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled "Per passare il tempo" ("To pass the time"). Airoldi's puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares; it included horizontal and vertical clues.

Crosswords in England during the 19th century were of an elementary kind, apparently derived from the word square, a group of words arranged so the letters read alike vertically and horizontally, and printed in children's puzzle books and various periodicals.

On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist born in Liverpool, England, published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the modern genre. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor. An illustrator later reversed the "word-cross" name to "cross-word".

Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the New York World, and spread to other newspapers; the Pittsburgh Press, for example, was publishing them at least as early as 1916 and The Boston Globe by 1917.

Text adapted from Wikipedia article “Crossword” (revision 1359762625, 2026-06-17), authors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.