Crossword Puzzle Makers: Things to know before you purchase

If you're holding pen and paper, wondering how to make crossword puzzles with the least expense of human effort, you may be looking to acquire crossword puzzle software. But deciding which is the best crossword puzzle maker to suit your needs is no easy task, as there are quite a few programs out there. Depending on your goals, you may want to opt for a full blown puzzle maker for professionals, which will tend to be rather pricey, or perhaps a simpler one may suffice if you don't need all the bells and whistles provided by the more expensive packages. This site offers some tips on selecting crossword puzzle making software and reviews two of the best programs available that cater to different necessities of crossword puzzle creators.

First of all, some introductions... There are many breeds of crossword puzzles, although typically we can draw a line and define two major groups:

• freeform crossword puzzles. These are the ones probably most useful for embedding vocabulary word lists as they can accomodate almost any choice of words without difficulty. They are created by intersecting the words horizontally and vertically in an undefined shape. Freeform crossword puzzles tend to be a great teaching tool because if all you want is a crossword puzzle that will include your words and only your words in a vocabulary unit, there is almost surely a shape that can achieve your goal in a freeform crossword puzzle.
• grid crossword puzzles. In freeform crossword puzzles, first you define the word list and then you create a shape that uses those words. Grid crossword puzzles work the other way around. First, the crossword author defines a grid and states which cells of the grids shall be filled by letters, and also which of them shall remain empty. Then it is a matter of filling those cells with the appropriate words, that find themselves constrained by the length of the word that can fit in the predefined cells. Grid crossword puzzles are usually of the type found in newspapers and magazines as they can be regarded as more elegant than freeform crossword puzzles, because more crosses between words will be generated. But perhaps not surprisingly, they are very difficult to generate and have even been the subject of scholarly research.

Now that we have presented the usual suspects, let's see which software programs provide the most bang for the buck in each category. After careful research, we selected two programs as the most prominent in their specific niche, one geared towards professional crossword puzzle authors, and the other targetting the needs of educators:

Classroom Word Games

We recommend Classroom Word Games as the good crossword puzzle tool for elementary school teachers because it provides excellent value at an affordable pricing point, just 25 dollars, well below the average price for this type of software, while providing many additional benefits to their target market. Classroom Word Games offers the possibility to create freeform crossword puzzles with a decently fast crossword generator. We benchmarked it with several word lists and the results were displayed blazingly fast, as opposed to some of the free online generators. The shapes of the crosswords generated where rather balanced and aesthetically pleasing, without wasting too much space in our sheet of paper.

Now, here's the catch, as a teacher you are probably not interested in the advanced capabilities offered by best of breed professional software, and Classroom Word Games does not try to lead you down that road against your will. You cannot generate grid crossword puzzles with this piece software, but you can do other things of direct application in the classroom, that your students will certainly appreciate more: word search puzzles, to reinforce correct spelling, or word scramble vocabulary worksheets, or creating vocabulary bingo or math bingo cards. Classroom Word Games achieves varying degrees of success at each of these tasks, but overall with decent results.

We found the software rather easy to use although perhaps the user interface is not as polished as that of some of its competitors, but we prefer good functionality over good lucks, and we hope that you do too. If you are looking for crossword software as a teaching tool, you won't be disappointed with this program.

Crossword Weaver

At the other end of the scale, we have crossword puzzle generators with high end features that can be useful for professional crossword designers. Crossword Weaver is one of them, and a really nice one indeed. With its eight edition in the market, Crossword Weaver is one of the established players in the field. We were very pleasently surprised by the depth and breadth of the functionality included in this piece of software.

Besides the ability to create freeform crossword puzzles, Crossword Weaver comes with powerful crossword editing capabilities to aid in the creation of grid crossword puzzles. Crossword Weaver comes equipped with a fast crossword generator, that even boasts that it can fill 51x51 grids where other programs would simply choke, and the created crosswords are likewise nice looking and balanced. You can edit the individual cells, and it also helps in the creation of pretty symmetrical puzzles, as those seen in magazines. After creation, the crossword can be published online and shared with your friends and relatives in a timely manner. You can export your puzzles to a myriad of file formats, including the ability to export to PDF files for publishing purposes.

If we were to point out just a negative point about it, it's that given the number of versions this program has gone through during the years, it has grown rather large, and the sheer number of functions may be a bit intimidating to the newcomer, so perhaps it is not very easy to use at first sight and requires a learning curve. Although we must say that once accostumed to the ways of the software, creating crossword puzzles with it becomes a breeze.