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Crossword Clue Helper

When a clue beats you, you still know two things: the shape of the answer and roughly what it means. Type either — the letters you've filled in, some words from the clue — and this searches both at once.

Searching our crossword answers and the clues we've written for them — the same database behind the crosswords on this site. Nothing is uploaded; the search runs in your browser. Holding loose letters rather than a pattern? That's the anagram solver.

Two halves of a stuck clue

Every crossword tool on the internet does letter patterns. Far fewer search the clue, because doing it honestly means having written some. This one has 15,019 of them — the clues behind the puzzles on this site — so you can come at a stubborn square from the shape, from the meaning, or from both at the same time.

  • 8,854 answers in the database, three to ten letters
  • 15,019 hand-written clues to search — 70% of answers carry more than one
  • 3 answers left once you know two squares of five — the arithmetic below

Using it

What to type where
You know Type You get
The shape only C?O?S Every answer that fits the slot, with the clues we've written for it
The length only ????? All five-letter answers — a lot, so pair it with a clue word
Words from the clue barrel Answers whose clue says that, ranked by how squarely it matched
Both C??? + barrel The intersection — usually one or two answers

Blanks can be ?, _, a dot or a space — whichever your fingers reach for. Clue words are matched against the whole clue text, so barrel finds a clue reading “Barrel of laughs”, and typing two words asks for a clue containing both. If no single clue carries all of them, you'll get the closest ones instead, clearly labelled rather than quietly substituted.

What one known letter is worth

The instinct when stuck is to stare at the clue. The arithmetic says the crossings are worth more. This is the same five-square slot, narrowing as squares get filled — counted across our own answers.

Answers still standing

Five-letter answers matching each pattern, out of 2,075.

  • ????? 2,075
  • S???? 301
  • ???ED 38
  • S??ED 3

One letter takes 2,075 candidates down to 301; a known ending takes it to 38; both together leave 3. Which is the case for solving the crossing answers first even when you think you can get this one — every square you fill somewhere else is worth more than another minute of staring here.

Crossword words are not ordinary words

Grids reward a particular kind of vocabulary: short, vowel-friendly, and endlessly interlockable. You can see it in the shape of the database — 5 letters is the commonest answer length here, with 2,075 of them — and you can see it even more clearly in how answers end.

How a crossword answer ends

The last letter of all 8,854 answers.

  • S 21.3%
  • E 15.1%
  • T 8.7%
  • D 7.6%
  • R 7.2%
  • N 6.1%

S ends 21% of answers — plurals and third-person verbs are a setter's best friend, because they let a grid close on a letter that starts almost nothing. If a down answer's last square is refusing to resolve, guess S and see what the across clue does.

Where these clues come from, and what that means

Being straight about this matters more than the feature list: the clue search covers our database — the answers and clues written for the crosswords on this site — not every crossword ever printed. If your puzzle came from a newspaper, its setter wrote different words for the same answer, and searching their phrasing may find nothing.

  • Clue search works best

    On the plain-English definition kind of clue — “Barrel”, “Not high”, “Small bird”. That's what our 15,019 clues are, so a definition you'd recognise is likely in there in some form.

  • Pattern search works always

    It doesn't care who set your puzzle. Tick include words we haven't clued and the same pattern runs over the full 168,000-word dictionary as well — the net for a crossword we had nothing to do with.

Before you reach for it

A clue helper is most useful once you've spent your own ideas, and there are three moves that solve more squares than any tool.

  1. Read the clue's last word again. It usually carries the definition, and the rest is decoration or wordplay. A clue is a sentence with one honest half.
  2. Check the tense and the number. A plural clue wants a plural answer; a past-tense clue wants -ED. That's often two free squares, and it's why the chart above leans so hard on S.
  3. Abandon the clue and solve its crossings. The arithmetic is unarguable — each crossing letter cuts the field by roughly a factor of seven. The answer you can't see usually arrives sideways.

Or come back to the puzzles

The database you just searched exists because of them: endless mini and micro crosswords built fresh in your browser, a shared daily crossword with streaks and an archive, and two grids that change the rules — fill-ins, where the words are given and the clues aren't, and anagram crosswords, where every clue is a scramble of its own answer. All free, no signup.