Mots encreuats published with the Crossword Generator — dense 11×11 to 15×15 grids in central Catalan, free to solve in the browser, or print with a blank grid and an answer key.
This is the public shelf of the Crossword Generator, the fastest tool for making newspaper-style crosswords (you can literally make one in just a few seconds). And once you’ve built a puzzle you like, you can submit it to be published here for anyone to solve online. And you can also print any crossword puzzle here, complete with the clues. Pass them around on paper! Physical media!
The puzzles on this shelf were made and published by other people using the Crossword Generator tool on this site. Using this tool you can make NYTimes and Guardian-style crosswords as well as criss-cross style, and they're all free to solve. You don't need an account, and there's nothing to install.
Click any puzzle to solve it right in your browser. Your progress saves on your device, and you can reveal an entry from the clue list when you're stuck. Prefer pencil and paper? Every puzzle prints as a clean blank sheet with a separate answer key, and each printout carries a QR code back to its online version.
Format
How to make a Catalan crossword
Catalan crosswords are called mots encreuats. If you solve the ones in La Vanguardia or El Punt Avui, the difference here is the numbering. The newspaper numbers its rows down the side and its columns along the top, and lists the clues line by line under Horitzontals and Verticals. These puzzles put a number in the first square of every answer, with one clue per answer, as the New York Times does.
The grids are dense, from 11×11 to 15×15, and every letter belongs to both an Across and a Down answer. A 15×15 of that kind needs about twenty three-letter answers and thirty four-letter ones. Catalan's short words are its own everyday vocabulary rather than abbreviations: ARA, AVI, BEC, CEL, COR, FOC, NEU, NIT, PEU, RIU, SOL, ULL, XAI.
Alphabet
Ç, the ela geminada, and no Ñ
Catalan writes with the 26 Latin letters and marks its sounds with signs, and every one of those signs comes off in the grid. À, È, É, Í, Ï, Ò, Ó, Ú and Ü are entered as the plain vowel, and Ç as C, so CANÇÓ sits in five squares as CANCO and BARÇA as BARCA. That is the convention of every Catalan newspaper grid. It also means the accent that separates DÉU (god) from DEU (ten) is no help in a crossword, and the crossing letters have to be.
The letter Catalan is known for is the geminate L of col·legi, intel·ligent and paral·lel, written with a raised dot between the two Ls. In a grid the dot is dropped and the word takes two ordinary L squares, COLLEGI, which looks exactly like the LL of LLET or CASTELL.
Catalan has no Ñ. NY does that job (ANY, CANYA, MUNTANYA), and TX (COTXE, DUTXA) and the -IG that closes BOIG, PUIG and MAIG are just as common. Each of them fills ordinary squares, one letter at a time.
The answers and clues are central Catalan, the standard of the Barcelona press. The dictionary behind the puzzles labels its Valencian, Balearic and north-western senses, and a word that exists only in one of those varieties was left out. A Valencian or Mallorcan solver will find the vocabulary familiar, and now and then meet a verb form that is not the one they would say.
Answers appear in their dictionary form: a verb in the infinitive, a noun in the singular. Each clue is a definition, never a grammar label like “third person plural of the conditional of disfressar”.
Questions
Catalan crossword FAQ
Yes. Every puzzle on this page can be solved in the browser at no cost, and printed with a blank grid and a separate answer key.
Close. A newspaper grid numbers its rows and columns around the edge and lists the clues by row. These put a number in the first square of each answer, with one clue per answer. The grid itself is the same dense, fully crossed kind.
Central Catalan, the standard of the Barcelona press. Words found only in Valencian, Balearic or north-western Catalan were left out, so a solver from those areas will find the vocabulary familiar and the odd verb form different from their own.
You don't. Accents and the cedilla come off in the grid, as in every Catalan crossword, so type C for Ç and the plain vowel for À, É, Í, Ò and Ú. The geminate L of col·legi takes two ordinary L squares with no dot between them.
Yes. Set the puzzle language to Catalan in the Crossword Generator, type in any theme words you want, and auto-fill completes the rest of the grid in Catalan. Then write your clues, and print it or publish it here.
Yes. With the accents folded away the alphabet is the plain Latin 26, which the one-byte .puz encoding covers, so Catalan puzzles export cleanly and open in Across Lite. Printing to PDF and sharing the link work as well.
Build one
Make your own crossword puzzle
Set the puzzle language to Catalan (or any language), type in the words your puzzle is about, and auto-fill completes the rest of the grid around them. Write the clues, then print it or publish it to this shelf.
The showcase is an open crossword community: anyone can construct. Make a puzzle with the generator (the solver does the heavy lifting of filling the grid), write your clues, and hit Publish. Set up an author profile and every puzzle you publish gets collected on your own page, ready to share.
Hi, I'm Tex and I put this crossword generator together so that anyone can easily make themed newspaper-style crossword puzzles, in any language. I've got some more cool projects that you can see back at texs.org! Feel free to email me or send me a DM:
