What is a codeword puzzle?
Open almost any puzzle magazine and you'll find one near the back: a crossword grid where every white square carries a small number instead of a clue reference, with a key alongside for recording which number turned out to be which letter. That's a codeword. Underneath the numbers is an ordinary, fully finished crossword — real words crossing real words — but the letters have all been swapped out according to a secret code, and nobody is going to tell you what it is.
What makes the codeword such an enduring favourite is that nothing is hidden except the code itself. There are no clues to misread, no trivia you might not know, no wordplay to see through. Every scrap of information you need is printed on the page from the first second; the whole puzzle is just you noticing more and more of it.
Your first codeword, move by move
Suppose you've just pressed New puzzle. Here's how a typical solve unfolds:
- Bank the freebies. Your starter letters (blue) don't live in one cell each — every number they crack is cracked everywhere. Before doing anything clever, look at each word that gained a letter or two. A word showing T _ E is nearly finished before you've begun.
- Pick on the little words. A three-letter word with two letters known usually has one honest completion. Better still, watch for a short word whose first and last cells wear the same number — 7·12·7 can only be a word like EYE, DAD or POP, and whichever crossing settles the middle letter settles all three.
- Spot the twins. Two identical numbers side by side inside a word almost always mean a doubled letter — EE, OO, LL, SS. There aren't many candidates, and each one you test against the crossings either collapses at once or clicks into place.
- Trust the busy numbers. Glance across the whole grid: the number that turns up most often is very likely one of the workhorse letters — E, A, S, T. The number that appears exactly once is probably something rarer. You don't have to commit; just let it steer which guesses you try first.
- Close it out with the key. As letters get placed, they cross themselves off the puzzle's letter list. By the endgame you're holding three or four leftover letters and three or four unsolved numbers, and the finish is pure elimination — the most satisfying mopping-up in puzzles.
Why the key runs from 1 to N, not 1 to 26
In a full-size magazine codeword — usually 13×13 or 15×15 — the setter squeezes every letter of the alphabet into the grid, so the key always runs 1 to 26 and part of the challenge is tracking down the lone J hiding in a corner. Our codewords are built small on purpose (5×5 up to 9×9), and a grid that size physically can't hold all twenty-six letters. Rather than print a key full of numbers that lead nowhere, we number only the letters your puzzle actually uses — typically somewhere between nine and low twenties — and show you exactly which letters are in play, crossing them off as you go. Same rules, same logic, none of the wild-goose chases.
No trivia required
Plenty of people who bounce off regular crosswords adore codewords, and the reason is simple: a codeword never asks what you know. There's no "Capital of Burkina Faso" to shrug at — the answers are all everyday words, and the challenge is recognising them through the fog of numbers, not recalling them from nowhere. It's a logic puzzle wearing a crossword's clothes, which makes it a natural pick for anyone who loves sudoku but wants letters instead of digits, and a kind on-ramp for solvers who find clue-reading a chore. (If you like the no-clues idea but prefer being handed the words up front, the fill-in crosswords are the codeword's easier-going cousin.)
Codeword, codebreaker, code cracker…
Different magazines fly different flags over the same puzzle: codeword is the most common name, codebreaker and code cracker are regulars, and puzzle historians call the whole family the cipher crossword, because the mechanism is a genuine substitution cipher — the kind people once used to keep letters private. If the codebreaking side of the story is what hooks you, we've written about that angle on our cipher crosswords page — it's the same puzzle wearing a trench coat, so solve under whichever name pleases you.
Printable codewords (large print too)
Codewords might be the most pencil-friendly puzzle we make — the key boxes and the letter list were born for scribbling — so every grid here can leave the screen. Open Download a puzzle pack just under the puzzle: pick a size, choose one to ten puzzles, add a name & date line for classrooms, and keep the answer key as a separate final page. There's a large print option that gives each codeword a full page with generous cells — worth knowing about, since codeword fans and large-print fans are famously the same people. Anything you print is remembered by your device and won't be dealt to you online again, so a travel pack never spoils your streak of fresh puzzles.
Teachers use codewords as stealth spelling and reasoning practice: a student can't confirm a letter without silently testing whole words against it, and the self-checking nature (wrong guesses collapse fast) means less hand-raising. If there's an option that would make class packs more useful, tell us — the printing side of this site grows by request.
Common questions
Do codeword puzzles need general knowledge?
No — that's rather the point. Every answer is an ordinary word you'd hear in a normal week, and the difficulty comes entirely from the code. If you can spot that _ A T next to a busy number is probably CAT before it's HAT, you have all the qualifications required.
How many letters do you give away at the start?
Between two and five, depending on the grid size. One of them is always the grid's single most common letter — the strongest possible foothold — and the rest are chosen at random, so two codewords never start from quite the same place. Starters are shown in blue and can't be typed over.
Is there always exactly one solution?
Yes. Every codeword here begins life as a real, fully filled crossword built by the same engine behind our mini crosswords, and the code is applied afterwards — so there is one true grid, and the Check button knows it. If two theories both seem to fit early on, some crossing down the line will vote, and you can read about the machinery on how we make our puzzles.
Do the numbers mean the same thing in every puzzle?
No — each new grid gets a completely fresh code, dealt at random, so 14 might be E today and W tomorrow. Nothing carries over between puzzles except your growing instincts. Your device also remembers every codeword you've solved here, and the engine refuses to deal you a repeat.
What's the difference between a codeword and a cipher crossword?
Only the name on the door. Codeword is what the puzzle magazines print; cipher crossword is the more formal title that nods to the substitution cipher underneath. Ours are the same puzzles either way — the cipher crosswords page tells the cryptography side of the story if you'd like it.