Crossword Help: Crossword types
As you could imagine, there are a wide variety of different crossword types, here at Crossword Help we aim to provide a few examples so see if you have come across any of them and tell us which one is your favorite!
Crossword Help: Different types
Diagramless crosswords
Also known as a Skeleton Crossword, a Carte Blanche or just a plain old diagramless, these crosswords offer the usual dimensions but they don’t tell you where the actual words are meant to go. So to complete the puzzle, you have to figure out what the clues are and where they fit in to the grid! It can be a different job when faced with a busy group of squares that hold multiple clues. If the symmetry of the grid is provided, this can help solve the puzzle.
Cipher crosswords
These crosswords are quite a lot of fun and very popular as their crossword squares that share matching numbers also share the matching letters. Cipher crosswords are also a bit more cryptic so the solver needs to use a different skill set to try and break the codes such as trying to determine vowels!
Blankout Crossword
This can often be found in the Daily Mail magazine, and the clues that are placed on the grid are found within the columns and rows, the clues are not numbered either. These types will give clues like which square shaded square to start off from.
A Crossnumber
This is an interesting one as it is the numeral analogy of a crossword and also called a cross figure crossword! The clues come in a variety of forms, such as mathematical equations or general knowledge questions.
A fill in Crossword AKA Crusadex or cruzadex
These are rather strange as you are given all of the words to start off with! The task at hand is to find out where all of the words fit on the grid and can actually be more challenging than it sounds! For this reason some of the words are longer than what you would usually find in a crossword.
Arroword Crossword
As the name states, arrows are involved with this specific type of crossword, instead of having a faie amount of blacked out squares, you will find arrows pointing the way for clues to be filed in. Some people regard this crossword as the most popular type in most European countries, having originated from Sweden.
Crossword Help: The Beginning
If you have never played a crosswords puzzle before, the first thing that you will probably notice is that there are a lot of black and white squares making up a big grid. This grid is what will be the base of your game and it changes every time you play. The whole point in this age old game is to fill in the blank white squares with letters that form either words or phrases, you need to figure out the words by answering the questions that come with the crossword, these are usually found on the side of the grid. Seeing as the majority of languages are written from left to right, crosswords are designed so that the words are spelled horizontally from left to right or diagonally from top to bottom, the blacked out squares that you see are there to separate the answers
Just so that you know which answer goes where, the beginning of the word normally has a number which means you can keep track of where to go next! You will find that the actual clues or questions point to these numbers and also direction, either “across” or “down” but a variation of this is to provide the amount of letters that there are in a word instead of giving an actual number as a point of reference, this can be a bit more tricky!
Crossword Help Tips
Just in case anyone ever asks you, the white squares that you see on the grid (the ones that you out the answers in!) have a special name and are called ‘entries’ or ‘answers’ or just simply the lights or the darks!
Sometimes you will find that the white squares share two words, this can be a bit tricky especially when one of the words is wrong! These spaces are usually called ‘crossed’, ‘keyed’ or ‘checked’ and if the squares are not shared they are simply called ‘uncrossed’, ‘unkeyed’ or ‘unchecked’.
Have you ever heard of cruciverbalism? Well, if you will technically be a cruciverbalists so cruciverbalism is the making of crosswords! It’s an old Latin word that is rarely used these days so I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I was you
A white cell that is part of two entries (both Across and Down) is called checked, keyed or crossed. A white cell that is part of only one entry is called unchecked, unkeyed or uncrossed.
The creating of crosswords is called cruciverbalism among its practitioners, who are referred to as cruciverbalists, from the Latin for cross and word. Although the terms have existed since the mid 1970s, non-cruciverbalists rarely use them, calling crossword creators constructors or (especially outside the United States) setters or compilers.
Crossword Help-a typical looking crossword
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The Crossword Help Team