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 an Italian crossword
Italians call crosswords parole crociate, and the magazine that defines them is La Settimana Enigmistica, printed weekly since 1932. Its classic schema is densely packed and sparing with black squares, and it is happy to use two-letter entries. An Italian grid is full of AL, DI, RE and OK. The clues come in two lists, Orizzontali and Verticali.
The puzzles here keep the numbered grid and the two clue lists, but every answer has at least three letters. Most grids are open lattices with about twenty-five long answers where a classic schema would have seventy short ones.
Alphabet
Twenty-one letters, and no accents in the grid
The Italian alphabet proper has twenty-one letters. J, K, W, X and Y are the lettere straniere, used in borrowings and foreign names, and a schoolchild reciting the alphabet leaves them out. They are rare in the answers here, so a solver can rarely count on one at a crossing.
Accents come off. À, È, É, Ì, Ò and Ù go into the square as plain vowels, so PERCHÉ is entered PERCHE and CITTÀ is CITTA. In Italian the accent marks stress, not a different letter. Since nothing falls outside A to Z, Italian puzzles export to .puz and open in Across Lite and other desktop solvers.
About 76% of common Italian words end in O, E, I or A. That is a much narrower set of final letters than English or German has. The last square of an Across answer is nearly always a vowel, which is easy to cross, but whole stretches of a grid end up rhyming.
Italian does not glue words together the way German and Swedish do. Its long words are built with prefixes and suffixes instead, and there are fewer of them, so an Italian grid has less to choose from past twelve letters.
Verbs are the other quirk. Italian attaches pronouns to the end of an infinitive, giving VEDERLO (to see it), SAPERLO and AIUTARMI, and it has gerunds like SPIEGANDO. These are real words, but they make awkward answers, so the easy puzzles here leave them out.
Questions
Italian 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.
The minimum answer length here is three letters. Classic Italian schemi allow two-letter entries, so these grids are more open, with fewer and longer answers than a Settimana Enigmistica layout.
No. À, È, É, Ì, Ò and Ù go into the grid as plain vowels, so PERCHÉ is entered PERCHE and CITTÀ is CITTA.
Yes. Choose Italian as the puzzle language in the Crossword Generator, type in any theme words, and auto-fill completes the rest of the grid with Italian words. Then write your clues, and print it, export it as .puz, or publish it here.
Yes. With the accents dropped, Italian grids use only the letters A to Z, so they export cleanly and open in Across Lite and other desktop solvers.
Build one
Make your own crossword puzzle
Set the puzzle language to Italian (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:
