Crossword Solver

What the crossword solver does

You have a half-filled entry and a clue that will not give. Type the letters you know into their squares, leave the rest blank, and every word that fits appears instantly. The solver searches 45,525 English words of four to fourteen letters, the same dictionary that powers the word lists across this site, and returns the matches in alphabetical order.

Pattern search is the natural tool for crosswords because the grid hands you letters in fixed positions. Knowing the second letter is R is worth far more than knowing a word merely contains an R, and the solver exploits exactly that. Unlike running the alphabet in your head, it never skips a candidate.

How it works

No ranking model, no scoring magic. Pattern matching is a solved problem, so the tool does one job precisely:

• Your pattern is normalised. Input is lowercased and anything that is not a letter, an underscore or a question mark is stripped out.
• Blanks become wildcards. Each unknown square turns into a single-letter wildcard, so C?A?E compiles to the anchored expression ^c[a-z]a[a-z]e$. A blank matches exactly one letter, never none and never two.
• Length filters first, then the pattern. Only words of exactly the right length are tested against the expression, and the survivors are sorted alphabetically.
• No blanks means a straight lookup. Type a complete word and the solver simply confirms whether it exists, a quick way to verify a speculative answer before you ink it in.
• Everything runs in your browser. The dictionary downloads once, then every keystroke re-runs the search locally, and your pattern is mirrored into the page address so the link always reproduces your current grid.

Worked example: cracking C?A?E

Say a five-letter across entry has the clue “Tall bird, or a lifting machine (5)” and nothing is coming. Three solved crossings give you C in the first square, A in the third and E in the fifth. Enter C?A?E and the solver finds 24 matches in the current dictionary:

Everyday words such as CHASE, CRANE and CRATE sit alongside rarities that only surface in the biggest dictionaries, so at this stage the clue has to arbitrate. But if the down entry through the second square yields an R, the pattern becomes CRA?E and the field collapses to 9:

The tall bird and the lifting machine are now staring back at you. Crossings compound, too: even without the R, learning only that the fourth letter is N would have cut the original 24 matches to just 2:

Only one of those is a word a mainstream setter would expect you to know, and it satisfies both halves of the clue. That is the arithmetic of pattern solving: every crossing letter multiplies your filtering power, and here two extra letters turned 24 candidates into a single confident answer, CRANE.

Strategy tips

• Chase crossings, not candidates. A pattern with two known letters often returns dozens of words while one with four returns a handful. When an entry stalls, the fastest move is usually to solve one more short crossing and come back.
• Rare letters filter hardest. A J, Q, X or Z in a known square eliminates far more candidates than an E or an S, so prioritise the crossings most likely to yield unusual letters.
• Lean on endings. If the clue implies a past tense, pencil in the final D before you search, and treat likely ING, ER and EST endings the same way.
• Mind the spelling. British puzzles use British spellings, so when a promising pattern refuses to resolve, check whether you are assuming the American form of the word.
• Verify before you ink. Type a speculative answer in full and the solver confirms whether it is a real word.
• Jumbled letters are a different job. When a clue gives you letters without positions, that is an anagram rather than a pattern. Use the anagram solver for those, and read our anagram solving guide to build the manual skill.

Related research

Pattern solving gets easier when you know the shape of the dictionary you are searching:

• Our five-letter words research digs into the most contested length in word games, the length this solver currently holds 15,783 words for.
• The anagram solving guide teaches the companion skill for clues that supply letters without positions.
• Browse the research hub and guides for the rest.