Easy and hard clues
Easy clues are straight definitions: a round decoration hung on a tree, the plant with red berries and spiky leaves. A child of nine upwards can work through them with a bit of help, and most adults will finish in ten minutes.
Hard clues add light misdirection and a few anagram-style constructions, closer to a newspaper quick crossword than a cryptic. They are not cryptic, because a genuinely cryptic clue set needs human writing rather than generation, and a bad cryptic clue is worse than no clue.
Grid and symmetry
Grids are built by interlocking the word list rather than fitting words into a fixed symmetrical pattern, which means they look slightly irregular compared with a newspaper grid. The trade-off is that every word is a real Christmas word rather than filler like ETUI or OAST, which is what symmetry forces on a puzzle setter.
Eleven by eleven gives about fourteen entries and suits children. Fifteen by fifteen gives twenty to twenty-four and is the adult size.
For classrooms
Replacing the word list with your own vocabulary makes this a spelling exercise disguised as a puzzle. The generator rejects a word it cannot interlock and tells you which one, so you can swap it rather than wondering why the grid looks sparse.
Questions
- Does the Christmas crossword come with answers?
- Yes. The filled grid prints on its own separate sheet, so you can hand out the puzzle and keep the solution aside.
- Are the clues cryptic?
- No. Easy clues are plain definitions and hard clues use light misdirection, closer to a quick crossword than a cryptic one. Generated cryptic clues are unreliable, so they are not offered.
- Can I use my own word list?
- Yes. Any list works, and the generator tells you if a word cannot be interlocked so you can replace it rather than ending up with a sparse grid.
- Why is the grid not symmetrical?
- Because every entry is a real Christmas word. Newspaper symmetry forces filler words into a grid, and a Christmas crossword with four obscure filler entries is a worse puzzle than an irregular one.