Hebrew Crossword Puzzles

A Hebrew crossword, a תשבץ, is mirrored. Across answers begin at the right-hand edge and run leftwards, the numbering starts in the top-right square, and the arrow keys follow the reading direction. Down answers work as in any other crossword.

These are plain definition crosswords, with the clues listed beside the grid. Israeli papers also run the תשבץ היגיון, a cryptic-style puzzle where each clue is a small piece of misdirection. That is a craft of its own, and these puzzles do not attempt it.

Five Hebrew letters change shape at the end of a word: כ becomes ך, מ becomes ם, נ becomes ן, פ becomes ף and צ becomes ץ. In running text this happens without thinking. In a crossword it cannot work, because the square holding the last letter of an Across answer sits in the middle of a Down answer. A letter there would have to be final and not final at once.

About a quarter of all Hebrew words end in one of those five letters, including every masculine plural in ־ים. So the grid uses the ordinary forms throughout, as Israeli crosswords always have, and ילדים is written in the squares as ילדימ. Nothing is lost, since no Hebrew word uses a final form anywhere but at its end.

The grid holds consonants only, with no niqqud, as in everyday Hebrew writing.

Hebrew builds words by fitting a three-consonant root into a vowel pattern, not by stacking suffixes. The result is a vocabulary packed into short words. The Hebrew word list behind the generator has about 756,000 entries, and six letters is by far the most common length. Only about 400 entries reach fifteen letters.

Turkish, which grows words with suffixes, still has about 55,000 entries at fifteen letters. That difference is why Hebrew grids favour short answers, and why most of the puzzles here are 13×13 or smaller.