Crosswords lets you generate sparse crossword puzzles out of a given set of words. Sparse means that the puzzle will not be arranged to completely fill a rectangular region (this would correspond to a dense crossword puzzle).

To start out, use the Add Word button to set up a list of words. Once you're done, press Generate Crossword in order to start the crossword generator. Your puzzle will appear within seconds provided that the generator succeeds.

If you're not satisfied with the layout of the crossword, use the Next Alternative and Previous Alternative buttons to cycle through different combinations of word arrangements. You can also rotate the puzzle by 90 degrees using the Rotate button.

Once you found your desired word arrangement, enter clues for each word in the text areas below the puzzle. For each word/clue pair you can decide whether to show students the clue and ask for the word or do it the other way around.

Finally, you can print both the puzzle and clues with the Print (...) buttons at the bottom of the page. The teacher variant will include both words and clues. The student variant will have only words or clues depending on the configuration you chose.

Note that the puzzle generation will fail if the specified words don't allow for a proper connection. For instance, you cannot build a crossword out of the words 'milk', 'sugar' and 'honey' since they don't have any letters in common. In such a case the application will notify you and suggest that you adapt your list of words.