Make a crossword puzzle

Creating your own online crossword puzzle

Learn how to create a crossword puzzle with Riddle.com. Creating a crossword puzzle for your website is a fun activity and will also help you with reader engagement and increase the time your visitors spend on your website. Crossword puzzles will increase your revenue from ads and improve your search ranks as your users spend a lot of time solving them and often share their results – and your website – with their network.

Importance of interactive and engaging content

Getting readers to engage with your content is a key ranking factor for all search engines, which also affects your ranking in popular AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity. These tools also base their recommendations on search engine results from Google and Bing. A crossword is one of the most popular puzzle types. The New York Times website is famous for its New York Times Mini Crossword. A daily 5×5 to 7×7 crossword puzzle that is beautifully designed and not too hard to solve. By engaging readers in solving a crossword puzzle, you also get more attention for the ads on your page, which will increase your overall ad revenue.

Introducing Riddle: A high end online crossword puzzle creator

The Riddle.com crossword builder allows you to build beautiful crossword puzzles that work really well on mobile devices and desktop computers alike. The flexible grid gives you the option to create easy-to-solve small puzzles or very large, extensive crosswords that keep readers engaged for half an hour or more. With the unlimited free trial option, you can create and publish a crossword puzzle with Riddle for your website or app. Building a crossword with Riddle is probably more fun than solving it. We have consciously decided against AI crossword puzzle generator as they are not aesthetic, displaying mostly empty spaces. AI has not been able to solve the puzzle of creating a crossword like the NY Times Mini just yet. You can create them with the help of AI, as we outline below, but a fully AI-generated crossword filling a symmetrical grid is not possible yet, according to many scientific papers published on the topic.

Play a live crossword puzzle from Riddle

This crossword puzzle was created with Riddle.com. We left all the reveal and check options turned on to make it a little easier to solve this puzzle.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Crossword Puzzle with Riddle

The crossword puzzle is just one of the many mini game types available in all Riddle subscription plans.

1. Create a new Riddle and select “Mini Game -> Crossword”
2. Set the grid size from 5×5 all the way to 15×15. Smaller grids seem easier to fill out at first, but you will find it easier to create a crossword with a bigger grid. Start with 7×7 or larger for your first crossword. Bigger grids give you more choices for words, especially if you combine them cleverly with blank spaces.
3. A perfect crossword puzzle has a theme. Select a theme and start adding words related to the theme. Especially the longer words should fit the theme. A theme also makes it easier for you to come up with words than to create something completely random.
4. Create a list of 15 to 20 words and add clues. Please avoid words shorter than three letters for your first word choice. You can use AI to find clues by prompting “I am creating a crossword puzzle, find a crossword-style clue for the word ‘TEAM”.
5. Drag your longest words into the grid first. Riddle will show you visual cues if the word placement works with all intersecting words or if there is a problem.
6. Aim for a high amount of checked letters. A checked letter is a letter appearing both in a across and a down word. Focus on common letters for the intersections. Common letters in English are E, A, R, S, T, N, I, O.

How to find words for your crossword puzzle

The good old dictionary is still one of the best tools to find words. When looking for a letter word that starts with TE , you can go to T in your dictionary and go through all words with these starting letters to find a match.Alternatively, you can use AI with this prompt: “I am creating a crossword puzzle. Find words that match the pattern TE?L. Replace any variable letter with a “?” Then, the AI will give you a list of matching words. We have found all popular AI tools (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Claude) to provide excellent results with this prompt. If you end up with 2 or 3 letter combinations that result from other words crossing, you can also either look these up in a dictionary or ask AI if it can give you a good definition of the respective letter combination. For example, when building a crossword, I ended up with the letters “NR”. Asking AI for a possible explanation with the prompt “I am building a crossword puzzle and I am left with the letters “NR” for a word. What would be a possible explanation I could add for that? I know this is not a common word, so I am also looking for common abbreviations that have a meaning using these letters.” will yield good results. Shorter prompts just asking for explanations for “NR” will often have the AI give you a lecture about good crossword design instead of providing the needed clues. Hint: the best results (as of October 2025) come from Google Gemini. The other AI engines tend to come up with quite a few hallucinations and wrong explanations.

Tips for Designing a Beautiful Crossword Puzzle for All Devices

Most users will visit your website from a mobile device. Any grid size larger than 9×9 will be too small to read and complete on a regular phone. The very popular New York Times Mini typically sticks to grid sizes of 5×5. This is a perfect size for a phone, but also very hard to create, as your choice of possible words is extremely limited. A good approach is to create a series of smaller grids for your daily crossword and then provide a large crossword for the weekend, where readers may have the time to solve the puzzle on a desktop browser. Riddle will automatically adjust the crossword display and font size for each device, so you don’t have to worry about creating multiple designs. Just keep in mind that grid sizes above 9×9 will result in very small and hard-to-read fonts on a phone.

Benefits of Sharing and Embedding Crossword Puzzles on Website

Adding a crossword puzzle to your website is a fun way to turn visitors into active participants. Instead of just reading your content, they can play, think, and interact right on your page. Crosswords keep people on your site longer, increase engagement, and make your content feel more dynamic. When you share them on social media or in newsletters, they become great conversation starters that attract new visitors. With Riddle.com, you can create and embed your puzzles in minutes, match the design to your brand, and give your audience something fun and memorable to enjoy. All social shares will lead straight back to your website.

Exploring Additional Features and Customization Options

As with any Riddle mini game, quiz or puzzle, you have a wide range of customization options to choose from. For the crossword, the key options are:

• Show rules
• Allow guess-checking
• Allow auto-checking of all letters
• Allowing answers to reveal, especially the options to enable checking and answer revealing, can make your crossword really easy or super hard to solve. We recommend auto-checking options to avoid frustrations unless you are using your crossword for a serious competition. With the ability to add pre- and post-roll ads from your ad server as well as ad banners below and above the crossword, Riddle offers a wide range of monetization options (our Business Plan is required to serve ads). You can also use the crossword puzzle as a lead generation engine by adding a lead form either before users start to play or after they finish (or give up) and promise to provide the solution to the game via email.

Conclusion and Encouragement for Creating Your Own Crossword Puzzle

Give the Riddle crossword maker a try. You will most likely find that creating a crossword is more fun than solving one. When I finish creating a beautifully filled grid, I proudly share it with my network and my readers. After you built your first crossword, you will have a lot of appreciation for crossword creators. These games are not easy to create but offer a great sense of achievement. You will also find your website visitors loving your game and spending 5 or 10 minutes on your website, which will lead to your page ranking higher on Google.

Market overview – all crossword puzzle makers compared

Global Crossword Puzzle Platform Market Overview for 2025

The market for digital crossword puzzle platforms is thriving worldwide. In 2025, the global crossword and puzzle market (including crosswords and other puzzles) is valued at roughly $3.02 billion, with continued growth driven by cultural engagement and digital innovation.  Publishers, educators, and brands increasingly use online crosswords to engage audiences and build habit formation on their websites. Launching a web app that lets publishers create and embed crosswords means entering a competitive landscape with both B2B-focused providers (serving media outlets, businesses, and schools) and consumer-oriented tools. Below, we survey major competitors, their offerings, and pricing models – with an emphasis on B2B services.

Enterprise and B2B-Focused Crossword Platforms

B2B crossword platforms are geared toward publishers, media companies, marketers, and educational institutions. These services often support high traffic, branding customization, and advanced features (analytics, multiplayer, etc.). Pricing is typically subscription-based, with tiers defined by usage (number of puzzles or plays) and enterprise support.

Riddle.com – Crosswords, mini-games, quizzes, polls and surveys

Riddle.com is a versatile multi-format platform that offers unlimited usage of all content formats for one monthly fee.

The Riddle crossword engine allows you to build crossword grids from 5×5 to 15×15 grid sizes with smart tools to help you with word placements.

The crosswords work cross-platform and are mobile-optimized. You can add pre- and post-roll content and also serve ads from any ad server above or below the crossword. Riddle also provides you with a flexible form builder to collect user data for lead generation, crossword raffles, and newsletter signups.

The benefit of using Riddle.com for creating crossword puzzles are the unlimited views and completions that are part of every Riddle plan. There is also no limit to how much content you can generate. Riddle content can be embedded via iframe and is optimized for mobile delivery. There is also an option to use Riddle content inside your native apps.

Pricing: Riddle has 4 pricing tiers that are all unlimited in terms of content, leads generated and usage. The main differentiator between the plans are styling options and advanced features like tracking, developer tools like API and JS events and connectivity to tools like Looker Studio for advanced analytics.

Riddle’s Essential Plan starts at $59 and allows you to create unlimited crossword puzzles. The Pro Plan starts at $119 and allows you to remove the Riddle branding. The Business Plan at $249 and the Enterprise Plan at $749 are targeting larger publishers and brands and come with a whole set of features that allow perfect styling with full CSS access, custom fonts, advanced connectivity and interoperability with your website and more.

Riddle is ISO 27001 certified, fully accessible and 100% GDPR compliant, which makes it a great choice for brands and publishers that need to follow current government regulations.

Competitive position: Riddle is a market leader in the interactive content market. With its previous focus on Quizzes, it is used on many leading publishers, sports and brand websites. Riddle’s recent addition of mini-games like Sudoku, Slot Machines, Wheel of Fortune and now Crosswords (in October 2025) will make it an easy choice for publishers who need more than just a crossword puzzle maker. Riddles unlimited pricing and low entry level plans allow risk free usage, without any extra cost for successful crossword puzzles. Riddle also offers a risk free 14 day trial that has all features unlocked.

Amuse Labs – PuzzleMe

Amuse Labs offers the popular PuzzleMe platform. PuzzleMe provides a robust toolkit: an online constructor for creating crosswords (and other puzzles like Sudoku, quizzes, etc.), easy embedding via iframe, and rich features such as multimedia clues, responsive design, multi-player mode, leaderboards, and analytics. Notably, PuzzleMe has an AI crossword generator to help create puzzles (e.g. generate clues from a topic or even auto-fill grids) and supports contest modes and custom theming. The layout of the AI generated cross words however are not great as too few words actually intersect.

Pricing: PuzzleMe has a freemium model. A Personal plan is free for individual use (unlimited puzzles, embed allowed) but limited to 2,000 plays per month and no commercial license . For commercial use, the Professional plan costs $249/month (or $229/month billed annually) and includes a commercial license, priority support, contest/leaderboard features, and higher limits (up to 5,000 monthly game plays, 2 staff accounts, etc.). Above that, an Enterprise tier starts at $500/month (usage-based pricing) with custom features, up to 5 staff users, on-demand play volume, white-label options, and an enterprise SLA. In summary, PuzzleMe’s pricing is primarily tiered by usage (number of puzzle plays/views per month) and feature set. All paid tiers allow unlimited puzzle creation; the limits apply to how many times users play the embeddable crossword. Amuse Labs also offers special pricing for small startups/teams on request .

Competitive position: PuzzleMe is a market leader in B2B crossword platforms, offering a polished solver interface. Its usage based pricing makes it a very costly option for high traffic websites.

Arkadium (White-Label Games)

Arkadium is a long-established provider of digital games and puzzles to publishers. They have over 20 years in the industry, famously powering Microsoft’s Solitaire and supplying the daily crosswords for some of the world’s biggest publications. Arkadium’s model is slightly different: instead of a self-serve puzzle creator, they offer a library of ready-made games (including crosswords, Sudoku, word searches, etc.) that publishers can license and embed as white-label content. Publishers using Arkadium typically get professionally made crossword content (e.g. daily puzzles from renowned constructors) delivered via Arkadium’s platform and customized to the publisher’s branding. Arkadium emphasizes its scale – providing over 1 billion hours of game engagement per year through its partners .

Pricing: Arkadium does not publicly list prices; deals are typically enterprise licenses or revenue-share agreements. Publishers can either license the crossword as a service (often ad-supported with Arkadium managing monetization) or pay for an ad-free white-label implementation. For example, Arkadium’s site mentions 300+ premium HTML5 games available for licensing, with customization to fit the client’s brand. Pricing likely depends on the package (number of games, traffic volume, exclusivity of content, etc.) and is negotiated case-by-case. (One unrelated hint: Arkadium launched a consumer subscription Arkadium Advantage for $29.99/year, but for publishers the costs are much higher and bespoke.) In short, Arkadium represents the syndication model – publishers pay for high-quality puzzle content plus a robust hosting platform, rather than creating puzzles themselves.

Competitive position: Arkadium is a major B2B competitor for engaging puzzles. Its strengths are the quality of content and turnkey solution – a publisher can add a daily crossword or suite of games with minimal effort. However, it’s less flexible for publishers who want to create custom puzzles in-house. Newer self-serve tools (like Riddle) target those who have their own content or specific branding needs, whereas Arkadium serves those who want a proven plug-and-play game section on their site. For a new web app entrant, Arkadium represents competition in terms of publisher budget: a client might choose to license puzzles from Arkadium versus using a new platform, especially if they lack a crossword constructor on staff.

Puzzel.org

Puzzel.org is an interactive content platform that allows users to create and embed various games, including crosswords. It’s a flexible, self-service tool popular among educators, trainers, and small businesses for embedding quizzes and puzzles. For crosswords specifically, Puzzel.org provides an online crossword maker with customization options (colors, fonts, etc.) and HTML5 embed code. Besides crosswords, it supports many other puzzle types (word search, bingo, memory, etc.), making it a broad solution for gamified content .

Pricing: Puzzel.org operates on a freemium + subscription model, where usage limits are defined by “player sessions.” A free account allows up to 2 puzzles (activities) and 60 player sessions per month (i.e. 60 plays). To go beyond that, paid plans are available at accessible price points, especially for non-profits/education:

• Education/Non-profit: Teacher plan at $30/year for 600 sessions/month, Teacher Plus $50/year for 2,000 sessions, and School $125/year for 5,000 sessions (with up to 5 teacher sub-accounts). These low-cost plans make Puzzel popular in classrooms.
• Business: Subscriptions are also inexpensive: a Supporter plan is $100/year for 1,000 sessions/month, and an Ambassador plan is $200/year for 5,000 sessions/month  . (It appears one can increase the session quota beyond 5,000 – possibly by custom quote – as the website interface suggests adjustable options .) All paid plans include unlimited puzzle creation and full feature access (e.g. result tracking, embedding anywhere, etc.)  .

Importantly, a “player session” on Puzzel is counted per unique user per puzzle – if the same person plays a puzzle multiple times, it still counts once . This usage-based model means pricing scales with audience size. Smaller publishers or blogs can pay just $100–$200 per year for a decent amount of plays, making Puzzel.org one of the more affordable B2B options for interactive crosswords. However, compared to Qzzr.com’s low price of $9 per month for up to 1,000 completions and Qzzr’s wider range of formats, Puzzle.org only comes in second as a choice for teachers and smaller publishers.

Competitive position: Puzzel.org’s strengths lie in cost-effectiveness and versatility. It’s a one-man project by a developer (Daan) but has gained global reach with localization in many languages . The platform might not have the enterprise polish or advanced analytics of PuzzleMe, but it covers the basics well: you can create good-looking crosswords, embed via iframe, and even leverage an AI “PuzzleGPT” generator for puzzles . Given its low price, Puzzel is often the choice for small businesses or educators who need a few puzzles embedded without a large investment. For a new entrant, Puzzel.org represents competition on the lower-end of pricing – it sets an expectation that basic interactive crosswords can be very cheap (or free) up to a certain scale. Being a one man operation also carries a significant risk for publishers who might want to consider a more established competitor with a bigger staff and a global footprint.

Interacty

Interacty is a broader interactive content and gamification platform (founded in Europe) that includes a crossword puzzle builder as one of its product offerings. Aimed at marketing campaigns, media, and education, Interacty lets users create visually rich crosswords with custom designs, timers, leaderboards, and even the ability to export puzzles to printable PDFs. It focuses on making puzzles engaging and on-brand: you can start from templates or scratch, style the crossword with your own background images, colors, and even incorporate lead-generation forms or competitions around the puzzle. Interacty essentially bundles crosswords into a suite of interactive widgets (quizzes, memory games, “spin the wheel,” etc.), and all can be embedded on websites or shared via link.

Pricing: Interacty uses a tiered subscription model with separate plans for individuals vs. business. Key plans (annual billing) are :

• Starter – $14/month (billed annually). Up to 1,000 views/month and 100 leads captured; includes all game types, basic stats, and a few premium templates .
• Basic – $29/month (annual) for 5,000 views/month, 1,000 leads, more templates .

For heavier use/business, the Pro plan is $85/month (annual) which allows 50,000 views/month, 10,000 leads, 5 team members, and other advanced features like white-label (remove Interacty branding), custom domain, Google Analytics integration, and priority support. (There is mention of a Pro+ or enterprise tier beyond Pro, though details weren’t fully visible – likely for even higher traffic and full white-label capabilities.) Interacty also offers a 7-day free trial (with Pro+ features enabled) so users can test all functionalities .

Interacty’s pricing is essentially based on monthly pageviews, and feature access. Unlike PuzzleMe or Puzzel.org, Interacty explicitly counts page loads rather than unique players – but the principle is similar: larger audience = higher tier. It does not limit the number of puzzles you can create, only how many times they are viewed/played per month across all your content.

Competitive position: Interacty competes by offering rich marketing features around puzzles. The ability to capture leads (emails from players), run contests, and integrate analytics appeals to businesses using puzzles for promotions or customer engagement. It’s a B2B SaaS with a polished interface and has both educational and corporate clients. In the crossword space, Interacty might not have the crossword-specific pedigree of PuzzleMe (no famous crossword editors behind it), but it provides a solid, modern UI and gamification elements (timers, leaderboards, etc.) to make solving more fun. For a publisher-focused app, Interacty is a competitor that positions crosswords as part of a larger interactive content strategy. Its pricing (Pro at $85/month for robust use) is expensive compared to Riddle’s $59 essential plan, especially if you factor in the view limit. A view based pricing is also very risky for publishers as they will end up paying for traffic to any web page that has an Interacty module embedded, regardless if the reader interacts with the game or not.

Other Notable B2B/Enterprise Options

• H5P (Open Source/Enterprise): H5P is an open-source framework for interactive HTML5 content. It includes a crossword content type , allowing creation of responsive crosswords with customizable look and even randomized letter arrangements. Organizations can use H5P for free by installing it on their site (e.g. as a plugin in WordPress or Moodle). H5P.com offers a paid hosted solution for enterprises or schools to create and embed H5P content without technical overhead . (H5P’s enterprise pricing is based on number of authors and learners rather than puzzle count; exact figures aren’t public on their site without contacting sales.) H5P’s crossword is fairly basic but appeals to educational publishers who want an in-house, privacy-compliant tool and have a skilled engineering team on staff who can set up H5P and maintain it.
• Syndicated Puzzle Providers: Aside from Arkadium, other syndicates like Andrews McMeel’s Universal Crossword or NY Times Games offer embeddable crossword content to publishers via licensing, but these are typically content deals (where the publisher gets a daily crossword feed) rather than tools to create custom puzzles. Prices vary widely; some smaller news sites simply embed free syndicated puzzles that come with advertising, while others pay for premium content. These providers are indirect competition, relevant if a publisher is deciding between “make our own crosswords” versus “license an existing popular crossword.”

Consumer and Educational Crossword Tools (B2C & SMB)

There is also a vibrant ecosystem of crossword creation tools for individuals, educators, and hobbyist constructors. These often overlap with B2B in functionality (you can embed puzzles from many of them), but their pricing and positioning target single users or small groups. Typically, these tools are lower cost (or free) and may not handle massive traffic or advanced branding needs, but they’re important competitors – a small publisher or independent blogger might choose one of these to embed puzzles instead of a pricier enterprise solution.

Qzzr.com – free crossword puzzle and quiz maker

Qzzr launched their free interactive content tools in September 2025. It offers a modern interface that provides a full-screen landing page experience and mobile-optimized embed code options. With many customization options and over 50 different formats its a viable competitor to the enterprise SaaS tools. The crossword puzzle maker is part of the mini-games content format, which also offers Sudokus, a Wheel of Fortune, and a Slot machine. The Qzzr makers say that they plan to add more mini-games frequently. Qzzr was one of the first online quiz makers that recently relaunched under new ownership.

Pricing: Qzzr offers free use of all formats for up to 300 completions. While that sounds like a low number for bigger publishers, it will give smaller websites a few months of free usage, especially as only completed crosswords and quizzes are counted. Qzzr’s pricing beyond the free plan is extremely simple. You pay $9 for each pack of 1,000 monthly completions and you can cancel monthly.

Competitive position: If you don’t require unlimited completions as offered by players like Riddle.com, and if you are looking beyond just crosswords, Qzzr is the go to choice for serious hobbyist, educators, small publishers, coaches and consultants. No other tool provides such a rich feature set at $9 per month. If all you need is a crossword maker, also consider My Crossword Maker.

My Crossword Maker (Crossword Hobbyist)

My Crossword Maker (formerly Crossword Hobbyist) is a popular online crossword puzzle maker geared toward teachers, students, and puzzle enthusiasts. It provides a simple web-based interface to create custom crosswords with a variety of grid sizes and layouts. Users can print puzzles or allow them to be solved online. Importantly, puzzles can be embedded on your own site using a provided JavaScript snippet.

Pricing: My Crossword Maker is a subscription service with a very accessible price point: unlimited crossword creation costs $5 per month (or $4 per month if billed annually) . There’s a 30-day free trial, and no credit card is needed to try making printables/online puzzles. With a paid plan, users get unlimited puzzles and features like saving online, printing, and embedding. They also offer options to purchase individual crossword licenses for one-off events or to get a joint subscription bundled with their sister sites (a word search maker and worksheet maker) at a discount. For classroom usage, they even support collecting online student submissions for assigned crosswords .

There is no explicit limit on how many solvers can play an embedded puzzle; the model is that a single subscription covers your usage as a constructor, and puzzles you publish can be taken by unlimited users. In practice, since this service is designed for individual use, extremely high traffic might not be the norm (and if a site got tens of thousands of players, they might run into bandwidth issues). But formally, pricing is flat-rate per month for unlimited puzzles and plays, making it very budget-friendly.

Competitive position: My Crossword Maker is positioned as one of the best low-cost tools for making custom crosswords. Because of its affordability, a small publisher or a teacher might choose this over costlier solutions. The trade-off is that it’s a simpler, more barebones platform: it may not have the fancy interactive features or analytics that the enterprise solutions do. The embed functionality works but is essentially the same interface as on their site, with MyCrosswordMaker branding unless you arrange otherwise. Overall, for individuals and small sites, this is a strong competitor (at just ~$5/month) offering essentially unlimited crosswords. If cost is a mayor concern but you need more than just crosswords, you should also check out Qzzr and their free plan for up to 300 completions.

Crossword Labs

Crossword Labs is a well-known, long-running website for generating crossword puzzles quickly and for free. Its appeal is the utter simplicity: you enter your words and clues, and it instantly makes a crossword that you can share with a URL, embed, or print. No registration is required and it’s completely free for basic use. There are no ads or watermarks on the output, which is quite generous for a free tool.

Key features of Crossword Labs include the ability to solve the puzzle interactively online, mobile-friendly display, one-click print/PDF export, and even export to formats like Word, PNG, or SVG for editing. Embedding is supported: after creating a puzzle, the site provides an HTML iframe code snippet to embed the crossword on any website. The embed is straightforward (a simple interactive grid), but not highly customizable – it’s a WYSIWYG solution .

Pricing: The core functionality is free. However, Crossword Labs offers an optional membership (paid account) for those who want extra features like privacy control. A one-time fee of $9.95 gives you a membership. Members can mark puzzles as hidden or private (so they won’t appear in public search results on the site) and can view answer keys of public puzzles. Essentially, paying is only required if you need to keep puzzles secret or access answer keys easily – most casual users don’t need to pay. The creator explicitly states that “most people don’t buy one, because you can do basically everything without a membership (you’re welcome)”. There are no usage limits on free accounts: you can create unlimited puzzles, and any number of people can play them. Even commercial use is allowed; Crossword Labs confirms you can use puzzles for commercial purposes with no attribution required (though appreciated).

Competitive position: A small publisher could use Crossword Labs to create a quick interactive crossword and embed it at no cost. The downsides are that it’s a very basic platform – no fancy styling or advanced gameplay features, and no dedicated support beyond a FAQ. It would also be highly advised to opt for the paid version to avoid having the crossword appear on other websites and create duplicate content (which is really bad for SEO). Also, the interactive solving interface is simple and functional but not as slick as newer platforms.

Crosshare

Crosshare is a newer entrant (launched around 2020) that has quickly become popular among the crossword constructor community. It’s a free, ad-free, and open-source platform for creating, sharing, and solving crosswords. Crosshare is community-driven: users (including many indie crossword makers) upload puzzles, and solvers can play them on the site or via an embedded viewer. It supports modern crossword features like puZ file import/export (for compatibility with other crossword software) and has a clean solving interface with timer, dark mode, etc.

For someone launching a puzzle on their own site, Crosshare offers embedding as well. In fact, Crosshare’s FAQ specifically addresses embedding: they encourage it and point out the advantages of their platform being open-source and free for this purpose . One can create a crossword on Crosshare and then use an embed code to place it on any webpage, similar to YouTube video embeds.

Pricing: Crosshare is completely free to use. The creator of Crosshare committed to keeping the site free and open-source, relying solely on donations from the community to cover maintenance. There are no premium tiers or charges for advanced features – everything (unlimited puzzles, unlimited plays) is available to all users. The project’s code is on GitHub, and enthusiasts can even contribute improvements or host their own instance if they wished.

Competitive position: Crosshare’s philosophy makes it a unique competitor: it essentially removes financial barriers and focuses on community and innovation. For example, Crosshare was known for hosting contests and featuring daily mini-puzzles, building a social aspect around crosswords. For a publisher, using Crosshare could be attractive because it’s free and one knows the platform is transparent (open-source code). However, since it’s donation-supported, large organizations might be cautious about relying on it for high-traffic needs (no formal SLA or dedicated support team). Also, Crosshare is designed by and for crossword enthusiasts, so it might lack some business-oriented features (like branding customization or data analytics that publishers might want). Nonetheless, it’s a strong competitor on the merit of cost (free) and has goodwill in the puzzling community. A tech-savvy publisher could integrate Crosshare puzzles and even customize the open-source code if needed.

Other Platforms and Alternatives

• Wordwall.net: A popular tool in education for creating interactive activities (including crosswords). Teachers can create a crossword with drag-and-drop ease and either share a link or embed it. Wordwall operates on a freemium model (limited free usage, then ~$6–$9/month for unlimited activities). It’s mostly B2C (teachers), but a small website could use it to embed learning games. The drawback for publishers is that Wordwall content carries Wordwall’s branding and is not designed for heavy traffic.
• Discovery Education Puzzlemaker: A classic free puzzle generator (by Discovery) that many teachers use to make printable crosswords. It recently added an online interactive option, but it’s very basic (no embedding, just a printout or image). It’s more of a legacy competitor for print crosswords rather than interactive web embeds.
• Custom Development: Some large publishers have in-house solutions – e.g., The New York Times has its proprietary crossword system (with paid subscriptions for users), and others use custom HTML5 games. While not “competition” in the sense of a service on the market, it’s worth noting that a potential publisher client might consider building their own crossword applet especially if they want a unique experience. This is more relevant for very large outlets with resources.

Conclusion and our thoughts on AI crossword puzzle makers

The crossword web app market is a mix of global players and niche solutions, serving everyone from major news publishers down to individual educators. Globally, interest in digital crosswords remains high as they drive engagement and even subscription revenue for publishers (e.g. NYT’s Games). For publishers, brands, sports teams and leagues, Riddle stands out with its no limit approach.

While many tools offer AI to create crosswords, you will find that there is no AI available yet, that can create a good crossword. On average an AI creates a crossword puzzle with close to 50% empty cells and very few words that actually cross. There are numerous university papers on the topic. Large language models (AI tools) are good crossword puzzle solvers. So if you get stuck on a crossword, do use these tools to cheat if that is your thing.

This is what a typical AI crossword puzzle looks like, created using the Amuse Labs AI crossword puzzle maker with a topic where the AI should be able to find plenty of words: “American History”

Summary

• Enterprise clients expect robust features (responsive design, multimedia, analytics, support) and are willing to pay for it – this is where PuzzleMe/Amuse Labs and Riddle currently dominate with a full-featured platform at professional pricing. Riddle’s long-standing service and no limit on views or completions appeals to those who want quality content delivered seamlessly .
• Smaller organizations or independent publishers have many affordable options like Qzzr.com (excellent value, usage-based pricing) or Interacty (integrated marketing features). These competitors cover the middle ground with moderate pricing and flexibility.
• Individuals and educators can essentially get by for free or at very low cost – from Crossword Labs’ free embedding to Crosshare’s open-source community approach, and low-cost subscriptions like Qzzr.com.
• Mix it up – create frequent crossword puzzles but also add mini-games like a Sudoku to your website for a greater variability of content.

FAQ