How This Crossword Solver Works

Every crossword answer has a fixed number of squares, and crossing words usually hand you a few letters for free. This solver takes exactly that — the letters you already have plus the blanks — and finds every word in the dictionary that fits the pattern.

• Enter one ? for every empty square. A five-letter answer with only a middle K becomes ??K??. Dots, dashes, and underscores are accepted as blanks too.
• Get the length right. The pattern length is the answer length, so P??AD??E looks only at eight-letter words — a fast way to narrow things down.
• Lean on the crossings. The more crossing letters you fill in first, the shorter the results list — one or two extra letters often takes hundreds of matches down to a handful.
• No matches? Double-check the length and the fixed letters; a single wrong square is usually the culprit. Obscure proper nouns and abbreviations won't be in a standard word list.

The dictionary is the same profanity-filtered word list that powers our Anagram Solver. Also handy: the Word Search Solver and our full library of free printable puzzles.