Lexifind Help:
Crosswords

Solving a crossword puzzle involves three kinds of knowledge:

  1. Knowing that a specific word exists that might fit into a given space
  2. Knowing how to choose words so that "across" words are consistent with "down" words that intersect with them (i.e., so that the letter placed where they intersect is the same for both words), and
  3. Knowing enough about the real world to apply the hints that a crossword offers for a given word toward finding that word

Lexifind can help you with items 1 and 2, above, but not with item 3. In practice, this means that the number of words found that can fill a particular space on a crossword can be fairly large, unless you already know some of the letters of that word and/or of the words that intersect with it.

This makes Lexifind a good tool for filling in difficult words when you are stuck after having already filled in a part of a crossword puzzle, but not usually a good choice for finding words when you are first opening up a crossword (i.e., when most of the squares are empty). But finding those difficult final words is exactly the task for which you would want to use a word finder, since you will be doing that after you have already challenged yourself as much as you can, and just need a little help with a particular part of your puzzle.

Another limitation of Lexifind so far as crosswords are concerned is that it does not presently have a word list specifically for crossword use that would include names of famous people and places, or common phrases run together as if they were a single word. We may add such a word list in the future, but for now you should be careful to use Lexifind only for single words that could be found in a dictionary, as opposed to proper names that might be found in an encyclopedia or a popular magazine. You can usually tell from its hint whether or not a given space is to be filled by a proper name.

If your crossword problem fits Lexifind's capabilities, then you may want to use Lexifind's Find Words facility to find the words that could fit a particular space in your puzzle.