How to solve crosswords

Fill in the easy answers first, then let the crossing letters do the work. Start with fill-in-the-blank clues, read every clue for small grammar hints (tense, plural, abbreviation), and learn the short words that keep turning up. Those three habits solve most of a weekday puzzle.

1. Do the fill-in-the-blanks first

Clues like "___ and void" or "Once ___ a time" have one obvious answer, and they're usually the easiest in the puzzle. Go through every clue once and fill in only the ones you're sure of. Don't get stuck on any single clue on the first pass.

2. Let the clue tell you the form of the answer

A clue and its answer always match grammatically. That gives away more than you'd think:

• Tense: a past-tense clue ("Ran quickly") needs a past-tense answer (SPED, not SPEED).
• Plural: a plural clue usually means an answer ending in S, which is a free letter in the last square.
• Abbreviation: if the clue has an abbreviation (or says "for short" or "abbr."), so does the answer.
• Question mark: a ? at the end means wordplay or a pun. Don't read it literally.
• "Maybe" or "for example": the answer is a category, or an example of one.

3. Work the crossings

In American-style grids, every letter belongs to two answers, one across and one down. When an across answer won't come, solve the downs that cross it. Two or three letters in place often make the answer obvious. If you're stuck with a pattern like _ R _ A, type it into a crossword solver to see every word that fits.

Vowels help most here. Crossword answers lean on them: in our own puzzle bank, 42.3% of the letters in answers are vowels, against 38% across the whole dictionary. When you're unsure, guess the vowels in a crossing first.

4. Learn the answers that repeat

Short answers with friendly letters come up again and again, because grid builders need them to make the long answers fit. In the 732 mini and midi crosswords in our current puzzle bank, 37% of all answers are three letters long, and these turned up most often:

NEW, ONE, NOT, BUT, CAN, TWO, ALL, NEE, END, AGE, USE, SET, RED, LEE, EAR, NOW, TEE, EGG, WAR, ERA, ANY, AREA, ORE, ART, OUT, EAT.

Notice the pattern: lots of E, A and O, and letters that are easy to cross. NEE, LEE, TEE, ERA, ORE and AREA rarely come up in conversation but fill grids constantly. Big newspaper puzzles have their own favourites, but the reason is the same. Once you know them, a lot of three- and four-letter clues answer themselves.

5. When to look something up

There's no rule against it in a puzzle you're doing for fun. Looking up one answer often unlocks a whole corner. If you want to keep it fair, check a single crossing letter instead of the whole word. In our daily crosswords, Check marks wrong letters for a small time penalty, and Reveal gives you the answer but takes that day's puzzle off the leaderboard.

Practise daily

The fastest way to get better is a small puzzle every day. Our free crosswords come in three sizes: a 5×5 mini, a 7×7 midi and a themed puzzle, all new each day.