Is a codeword harder than a crossword?

It is a different difficulty. A crossword can defeat you with knowledge you simply do not have; a codeword cannot, because everything needed is in the grid. What it asks for is patience with spelling patterns, and it gets easier the further in you are.

Why does the small grid feel harder than the big one?

Fewer crossings. A 9 × 9 has about 60 letter squares and no entry longer than five letters, so each deduction rests on less evidence and a wrong idea survives longer. The 13 × 13 has more than twice the squares and its entries constrain one another far more tightly.

Should I write letters in pencil or commit to them?

Commit, and use undo. Every letter here is written against a number rather than a square, so taking one back removes it from the whole grid in a single step — which is the real reason a paper codeword is solved in pencil, and it costs nothing on screen.

Can the hint give me a letter I could not have worked out?

No. It runs the same deduction you would, starting from the letters you have right, and reveals the first one that is genuinely forced. The only time it reads from the key is when your board contradicts itself and nothing can be forced at all — and it tells you that is what happened.

How to Solve a Codeword

Start from the letters you are given and find the entry they constrain most. Fit real words to its number pattern, write the letters that every candidate agrees on, and let each new letter spread through the grid. Keep the key one-to-one — a placed letter is gone for every other number — and repeat. A correct codeword can always be finished this way, without a guess.

The rules, step by step

1Read the grid as a cipherEvery letter square holds a number. One number means one letter, the same letter everywhere it appears in the grid, and there are no clues of any other kind.
2Start from the letters you are givenTwo or more numbers already have their letter printed in. They are not a bonus — they are the foothold the rest of the deduction is built from, and they cannot be changed.
3Write a letter against a numberPick a number, choose a letter, and it is written into every square carrying that number at once. That is the whole input: you are filling in the key, not the squares.
4Keep the key one-to-oneTwo numbers can never stand for the same letter. A letter you have placed is spent, and it is why two different numbers inside one entry must be two different letters.
5Make every entry a real wordEvery run of three or more squares, across and down, is a word from the familiar list. An entry that cannot be completed into a word is the signal that something earlier is wrong.
6Finish the alphabetThe puzzle is solved when every number on the board carries its letter and each entry reads as the word the grid was built from. There is exactly one way for that to happen.

Try it — the rules above, running

Loading the word list…

Time0:00Solved—Given—Puzzle—

Hint works out the next letter that is actually forced by what you already have right and says which entry forced it — it only reads from the key when the board contradicts itself. Undo takes back the last letter, and the three-dot menu holds today’s shared grid, the grid size and check-as-you-go, which marks any number that disagrees with the key.

Your statistics · 11 × 11

Played: 0
Won: 0
Win rate: 0%
Streak: 0
Best streak: 0
Best time: —
Letters left: —

This grid

92 or 93 letter squares and 38 to 42 entries, the longest up to seven letters. Three or four given letters is the usual opening: enough crossings that one long entry with three known letters tends to collapse the whole corner around it.

Keyboard

A – Z: Write that letter against the selected number
Backspace: Take the letter off that number
Arrows: Move around the grid
Shift + H: Hint — the next letter that is forced
Ctrl/⌘ + Z: Undo
Shift + F: Full screen
?: This list

Where do you start a codeword?

1Find where the given letters landWrite each given letter into every square carrying its number, then look at which entries have gained most from it. One given letter in a five-letter entry with two crossings is worth more than two given letters scattered in the corners.
2Count the repeatsFind the two or three numbers that appear most often. In a filled grid those are vowels and the letters E, S, R, N, T. You are not committing to anything yet — you are deciding which numbers are worth thinking about.
3Attack the most constrained entryTake the entry with the highest proportion of known letters and list the words that fit. If every one of them has the same letter in some position, that letter is settled — not guessed, settled, because no other answer exists.
4Spread the new letterWrite it against its number and the grid fills it in everywhere. Each placement usually improves two or three other entries at once, which is why a codeword speeds up rather than slowing down.
5Cross the letter offA placed letter cannot be any other number's letter. Strike it off the tracker: the letters that remain are the entire candidate set for every number you have not settled.

Which patterns are worth learning?

A repeated final number across several entries is S far more often than anything else — plurals and third-person verbs are everywhere in a word list.
A doubled number inside an entry is one of the doubling letters: LL, SS, EE, OO, TT, FF, NN. It is never JJ or QQ.
Q is followed by U in every common English word, so a number that only ever appears immediately before one particular other number is a strong Q candidate.
Three-letter entries are the weakest evidence in the grid: 677 dealable common words fit that shape, so let the longer entries decide and use the short ones to confirm.
A number that never appears in a long entry tends to be an awkward letter — the long words in a familiar word list are built from common letters.

What do you do when you get stuck?

Stop looking for the next letter and look for the entry that has changed most since you last read it. Getting stuck in a codeword almost always means a crossing has quietly become informative and nobody went back to it. Read the whole grid once, entry by entry, saying the known letters out loud with a gap for the unknowns — the ear finds ?A?ER faster than the eye does.

If that fails, use the tracker in reverse. Take the letters you have not placed and ask which of them could possibly go in the most-constrained empty square. Four candidate letters and one square that has to start a five-letter word is usually a one-minute problem, and it is exactly the deduction the hint button makes when you ask it.

How do you know your answer is right?

Because there is only one, and the board confirms it the moment the last number is placed. You do not have to trust that: every grid is proved unique before it is dealt, against the full 172,823-word list rather than the smaller one the entries came from. Two people solving the same puzzle number cannot end up with different grids.

While you are solving there are two safety nets. A letter placed against two numbers is flagged immediately, because that can never be part of an answer; and check-as-you-go, in the three-dot menu, marks any number that disagrees with the key. Turn the second one off if you want the solve to stand on its own — it is off by default for exactly that reason.

How do you win more often?

Work the entry with the most letters already in itNot the longest entry — the most constrained one. Three known letters in a five-letter entry usually leaves one or two candidates, while one known letter in a seven-letter entry leaves hundreds. Constraint beats length every time, and the board shows you both.
Mine the endings before the beginningsEnglish word endings are far more predictable than their starts. A number shared by the last square of four different entries is S in almost every grid; a repeated two-square ending is ED, ER or LY. One such guess confirmed by a crossing typically settles three numbers at once.
Treat the tracker as the candidate listEvery letter already placed is ruled out for every unsolved number, because the key is one-to-one. Late in a solve the unplaced letters are usually four or five awkward ones — J, Q, V, X, Z — and knowing that a number must be one of them tells you which entries it cannot belong to.
Let a contradiction tell you which idea to dropWhen the board flags two numbers sharing a letter, the useful question is which of them was deduced and which was assumed. Deduced letters came from a crossing you can re-check in ten seconds; assumed ones came from a word that merely looked likely. Drop the assumption first.
Use a doubled number as a fingerprintTwo of the same number side by side in an entry is a doubled letter, and English doubles a short list: L, S, E, O, T, F, N. Two of the same number separated by one square is rarer still and usually points at a vowel. Either pattern narrows a seven-letter entry faster than any single crossing.

Common questions about codeword

Is a codeword harder than a crossword?: It is a different difficulty. A crossword can defeat you with knowledge you simply do not have; a codeword cannot, because everything needed is in the grid. What it asks for is patience with spelling patterns, and it gets easier the further in you are.
Why does the small grid feel harder than the big one?: Fewer crossings. A 9 × 9 has about 60 letter squares and no entry longer than five letters, so each deduction rests on less evidence and a wrong idea survives longer. The 13 × 13 has more than twice the squares and its entries constrain one another far more tightly.
Should I write letters in pencil or commit to them?: Commit, and use undo. Every letter here is written against a number rather than a square, so taking one back removes it from the whole grid in a single step — which is the real reason a paper codeword is solved in pencil, and it costs nothing on screen.
Can the hint give me a letter I could not have worked out?: No. It runs the same deduction you would, starting from the letters you have right, and reveals the first one that is genuinely forced. The only time it reads from the key is when your board contradicts itself and nothing can be forced at all — and it tells you that is what happened.

Ready to stop reading? Play codeword on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.