Arabic Crossword Puzzles

An Arabic crossword, الكلمات المتقاطعة, reads right to left. Across answers begin at the right-hand edge, the numbering starts in the top-right square, and the arrow keys follow the reading direction. Down answers work as in any crossword.

Arabic newspapers usually number the rows and columns rather than the answers, so a single line under أفقياً can carry the clues for two or three words in the same row. These puzzles number each answer instead, with one clue per answer under أفقي and عمودي, which is easier to follow on a screen. The clues are plain definitions in Modern Standard Arabic, not dialect.

Each square holds one letter in its stand-alone shape. Arabic letters join their neighbours in running text, but a square belongs to an across and a down answer at once, so the connected forms cannot apply there.

The harakat are left out, as in a newspaper. Hamza on an alif is not written either: أ, إ and آ all go in the square as plain ا, and alif maqsura ى is written ي. Taa marbuta ة keeps its own square, and so do ء, ؤ and ئ, because they are letters an Arabic solver expects to fill.

Arabic builds words by fitting a consonant root into a pattern: ك ت ب gives كتب, كاتب, مكتب and كتاب. Short vowels are not written, so the words are short on the page. The Arabic word list behind the generator has 654,787 entries, six letters is the most common length, and only 85 entries reach fifteen letters.

Arabic also writes many small words solid with the next one. وكتابه, "and his book", is a single string, so a list built from real text is full of forms like it. The puzzles use dictionary words only: roots, broken plurals such as جوارب and اقدام, and words like نافورة and بطاريات. Because most of those words are short, six of the ten grids here are dense and the other four are freeform, with no symmetry rule and answers of three to seven letters.