Sanaristikot published with the Crossword Generator — dense 11×11 to 15×15 grids in everyday Finnish, 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 Finnish crossword
The crossword most Finns grew up with is the newspaper ristikko, a Swedish-style picture crossword. The clues are written inside the black squares, arrows point at the answers, and a photograph in one corner often has a caption that is the long answer.
The puzzles here are the other Finnish form, the sanaristikko, in the style of the New York Times. Every letter belongs to both an across and a down answer, a number sits in the first square of each answer, and the clues come in two lists, Vaakasuoraan and Pystysuoraan. The layout may look a little foreign to a Finnish solver, but the vocabulary is everyday Finnish.
Alphabet
Twenty-nine letters, three of them after Z
Finnish uses the Latin alphabet plus Ä, Ö and Å, sorted after Z. They are letters in their own right, not accented A and O, and the difference matters: SÄÄ is the weather and SAA means gets, KÄSI is a hand and KASI is slang for eight. Å appears only in Swedish names and loans such as ÅNGSTRÖM. Š and Ž turn up in a few loanwords and are written S and Z in a grid, so šakki (chess) goes in as SAKKI.
Finnish spells what it says, which helps a solver. There are no silent letters, and every long vowel and double consonant is written twice: TULI is fire, TUULI wind, TULLI customs. Vowel harmony helps too. A word's endings carry either front vowels (Ä, Ö, Y) or back vowels (A, O, U), so a half-filled answer often tells you which vowels the rest must be.
Ä, Ö and Å all fit in the encoding the .puz format uses, so Finnish puzzles export to .puz and open in standard crossword apps.
Finnish has fifteen noun cases and inflects nearly everything, so one word can appear in dozens of forms. Answers here are almost always the dictionary form: a noun in the nominative singular (TALO, not TALOSSA, "in the house") and a verb in the first infinitive (LUKEA, not LUEN).
The exception is a handful of short forms that every Finnish grid leans on, because the dictionary has few three-letter words. A third-person past (SAI, got; VEI, took), an imperative (SYÖ, eat!), a genitive (YÖN, of the night) or a personal form like OLET (you are) can appear as an answer, and its clue says which form it is.
Questions
Finnish 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.
No. Those are Swedish-style ristikot with the clues inside the grid and arrows to the answers. These are numbered grids with the clues in two lists (sanaristikot). The words are the same everyday Finnish.
Almost always the basic form: TALO rather than TALOSSA, LUKEA rather than LUEN. A few short answers are inflected forms, such as a third-person past (SAI) or an imperative (SYÖ), and their clues say so.
On a Finnish or Swedish keyboard they have their own keys. Elsewhere, use your system's method (Option-U then A on a Mac, or a long press on a phone). The grid never accepts A for Ä, because they are different letters and make different words.
Yes. Choose Finnish as the puzzle language in the Crossword Generator, enter any theme words you want, and auto-fill completes the rest of the grid. Then write your clues, and print, export or publish the puzzle here.
Yes. Ä, Ö and Å all fit in the Latin-1 encoding the .puz format uses, so Finnish puzzles export and open in standard crossword apps.
Build one
Make your own crossword puzzle
Set the puzzle language to Finnish (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:
