How to create a crossword puzzle?

My wife loves crossword puzzles, and it served as a good enough motivation for me to try out doing a crossword puzzle generator.

A couple of (mostly failed) iterations later I had only very simple puzzle creator with up to 6x6 letter word puzzles in a sensible time.

But this got me thinking: It would probably make a decent mobile game if I used these small grids instead of trying to complete a full-page, 20x20 word puzzles.

The learnign form this is, that sometimes you'll end up with a very very complex solution to your problem, or even hit a brick wall. But the key point when experimenting is to be able to learn from your progress — and to be able to change your problem instead.

As always, you can play the game for free here:

Play Simple Crossword Puzzle game

(note that the game is in Finnish)

This time the game itself is also published as open source. Check it out at:

• Crossword puzzle generator source
• Crossword puzzle game source