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 Korean crossword
A Korean crossword, 가로세로 낱말퀴즈 ("across-down word quiz"), puts a whole Hangul syllable block in each square, never the individual letters it is built from. 농사 (farming) takes two squares, 망원경 (telescope) three, 설상가상 four. Across clues are 가로 열쇠 and down clues 세로 열쇠, the "keys" to each direction.
The grids look like a Guardian puzzle more than an American one. Black squares take up about 38% of the board, there is no symmetry, and many squares belong to a single answer rather than two. That is not a style choice. The next section explains why a Korean grid has to be built that way.
The grid
Why Korean answers rarely cross
Two answers can cross only where they share a square, so in Korean they have to share a whole syllable. English has 26 letters to match on. The Korean answers on this site use 997 different syllable blocks.
The difference is large. Pick two random answers from the English list here and they share at least one letter 79% of the time. Pick two from the Korean list and they share a syllable 2.6% of the time.
It is tempting to treat East Asian crosswords as one tradition. They share the idea of one sound or character per square instead of one letter, and not much else, because the scripts are so different in size.
Japanese crosswords (クロスワード) are written in kana, a syllabary of about 46 basic signs. A small ッ or ャ counts as its full-size form, while ガ and カ stay different letters. With so few signs, Japanese words cross each other freely.
Japanese puzzles therefore follow strict grid rules, set out by the puzzle publisher Nikoli: no two black squares side by side, and black squares may never cut the grid into pieces. Japan's first crosswords ran in Sunday Mainichi in March 1925.
Chinese crosswords (填字游戏) put one character in each square. A character can be a whole word, so crossings are difficult, and Chinese grids are therefore sparse like Korean ones. Symmetry is rarely attempted.
Questions
Korean 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.
Use a Korean keyboard layout or input method. Each square takes one finished syllable block, so type the whole syllable (농, not ㄴ ㅗ ㅇ) before moving to the next square.
Because two Korean answers can cross only where they share an entire syllable, and that is rare: 2.6% of random pairs, against 79% for English letters. A Korean grid spends black squares where an English one would force a crossing.
No. Japanese puzzles use kana, about 46 signs, so words cross easily and grids follow strict rules on black squares. Chinese puzzles use characters, so crossings share meaning and four-character idioms dominate. Korean sits in between: a phonetic script, but with thousands of distinct syllable blocks. See the Japanese and Chinese crosswords.
Yes. Choose Korean as the puzzle language in the Crossword Generator and enter your words. It lays them out criss-cross style, crossing on shared syllables. Then write your clues, and print or publish the puzzle here.
No. The .puz format stores one Latin byte per square and cannot hold a Hangul syllable, so it is disabled. Printing to PDF and sharing the puzzle link both work.
Build one
Make your own crossword puzzle
Set the puzzle language to Korean (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:
