What makes a crossword a "Sunday"?
Size, mostly. Weekday newspaper crosswords settled on 15×15 squares generations ago; the weekend edition, with more pages and more time on its hands, grew a bigger puzzle to match — almost always 21×21. That's not just "a bit bigger": it's nearly twice the area, which in practice means roughly a hundred clues instead of seventy, and a grid you genuinely cannot finish on a bus ride. Over the decades "Sunday crossword" stopped meaning a day of the week and started meaning a format: the leisurely, oversized puzzle you spread out on the table. That's exactly what this page builds — a fresh 21×21 every time, no scissors or subscription required.
The great Sunday myth: bigger isn't harder
Ask a non-solver and they'll tell you the Sunday puzzle must be the hardest of the week — it's the biggest, after all. Crossword folk know the open secret: in the famous difficulty ramp that newspaper puzzles follow through the week, the Sunday sits around midweek level. It was never meant to be a final exam; it was meant to last longer. The challenge of a Sunday is stamina and geography, not knowledge of 1930s opera singers.
We lean into that idea harder than anyone: our Sunday grids use the same everyday-words-only list as our minis and midis. A ten-year-old can know every answer in the grid. What makes it a Sunday is purely the scale — the pleasure of a puzzle that unfolds in chapters instead of one bite. Easiest clues on the site, biggest grid on the site, and no contradiction at all.
A puzzle with a pace of its own
A mini is a espresso shot and a midi is a coffee break, but a Sunday crossword is a day. It's the puzzle you start after breakfast, abandon for a walk, and come back to at four o'clock to find that 62-Across has quietly solved itself in the back of your mind. It's also the most social format in crosswords — the one that gets passed across the table ("you're better at the animal ones"), solved by committee, argued over, and finished by whoever wanders past the kitchen counter last. If you print one (more on that below), leave it out with a pencil on top and watch what happens to it by evening.
Our daily crossword gives everyone the same 15×15 each morning — a shared ritual with a streak to protect. The Sunday page is the opposite kind of luxury: no clock, no streak, no schedule, and a bottomless supply. Take six hours over one, or press New puzzle because the grid you got wasn't in the mood you were. Nobody's watching.
How to solve a giant grid without getting lost
- Do a full gimme pass. Read all hundred-ish clues once, filling only the certainties. On a grid this size that first pass plants flags in every corner — you'll never face a truly empty region.
- Solve neighborhoods, not numbers. A 21×21 is a small town. Finish the block you're in before commuting: half-filled crossings make every next answer cheaper.
- Use the long answers as highways. The eight-, nine-, and ten-letter entries cross whole neighborhoods. Crack one and it hands out letters to a dozen shorter words on the way through.
- Walk away. This is real Sunday technique, not defeat. Giant grids reward a fresh brain more than a stubborn one — the clue that stumped you at noon is oddly transparent after lunch.
- Stuck at the very end? Check flags wrong letters without spoiling anything, and for a stubborn pattern like C _ R _ U S _ L our crossword solver will settle the argument.
Where are the puns? An honest note about themes
Traditional Sunday puzzles usually carry a theme — a title like "Making a Splash" and a handful of extra-long answers that are all puns on the same idea. It's a lovely tradition, and we're not going to pretend this page has it: our Sunday grids are themeless. Theme entries are the one part of crossword making where a human pun-smith still beats careful software, and we'd rather give you an honest, smooth themeless grid than a machine's idea of a joke. (Our puns live in the articles instead. You may have noticed.) What you get in place of a theme is long showcase answers scattered through every grid, and vocabulary that stays friendly the whole way down. If you want puzzles where every answer fits one topic, that's a different pleasure — and it's what our themed crosswords are for.
Why our Sunday grids look the way they do
Compare our grid with a newspaper's and you'll spot differences. Our longest answers run to ten letters — no 21-letter phrase spanning the whole grid. A few letters are checked in one direction only. And we spend black squares more generously than a broadsheet does, so the grid reads as a set of connected neighborhoods rather than one wide-open prairie. All three come from the same choice, made everywhere on this site: every answer comes from our hand-curated list of everyday words, with clues written for each one. Grid-filling software can fill a dense giant grid, but it does so by reaching for crosswordese — the ERNEs, OLEOs, and ESNEs that turn a cozy Sunday into a vocabulary test in a dead language. We'd rather shape the grid around friendly words than pad friendly grids with unfriendly words. The full story is on how we make our puzzles.
Print the Sunday spread
If any puzzle on this site was born for paper, it's this one. Open Download a puzzle pack under the grid and you'll get a PDF laid out the way a Sunday should be: the full-page grid on one sheet and all the clues on the next, so you can set them side by side like the center spread of a weekend paper. Add an answer key on its own pages, a name & date line, or large print that spares everyone the squint. Print one for the kitchen table or ten for a rainy cabin weekend — puzzles you print are remembered by your browser, so they won't turn up again online.
Sunday crossword FAQs
What size is a Sunday crossword?
The classic weekend size is 21×21 — the size we build here. (A few publications have used 23×23 or even 25×25, but 21 is the broadly agreed "Sunday-sized".) That's close to double the area of the 15×15 weekday standard, with about a hundred clues.
Is this the newspaper's Sunday puzzle?
No — the big papers' Sunday crosswords are their own copyrighted publications, and we don't republish anyone's puzzles or clues. Everything here is original, generated from our own word and clue list, free, and unlimited. Think of it as the Sunday format, open all week.
How long should one take?
Regulars might finish in forty-five minutes; a relaxed solver grazing at it across a day is using the format exactly as intended. There's no timer on this page on purpose — if you want to race a clock, our daily puzzle keeps your times.
Is it harder than your other crosswords?
The clues are the same easy, everyday level as the rest of the site. It's longer, not harder — more clues, more crossings, and long answers that take a few visits. If our midi is a 5k, this is the marathon where everyone still gets a medal.
Can I play on my phone?
Yes — on a small screen the board scrolls sideways so the squares stay big enough to tap. It works, but this puzzle loves elbow room: a tablet, a laptop, or the printable pack is the deluxe experience.
Do I have to finish in one sitting?
Keep the tab open and your grid waits patiently — wander off, come back, keep going. If your Sunday involves closing the laptop, print the puzzle instead; paper never loses your progress, and it accepts coffee rings as decoration.