How to Solve Crossword Clues When You Know Some Letters

Every answer you fill in gives you letters for the answers that cross it. For short answers, those letters are often enough to jog your memory. For long answers, it works better to treat the known letters as a pattern, list every word that fits, and pick the one that matches the clue.

How much each letter is worth

We took 300 random words of each length from this site's word list, revealed some of their letters at random positions, and counted how many words in the list still fit. The table shows the median count:

Each of the first few letters cuts the list to about a tenth of its size. With three letters known, even a nine letter answer usually has fewer than 20 candidates, which you can read in a few seconds. So if you are stuck on a long answer, solve one or two of the short clues that cross it first.

Turn crossing letters into a search

Open the word finder for the answer's length and type each letter you know into its box under Letters By Position. Leave every other box empty.

Say the clue is Coming into view (8).

• With a T in the last square and an E in the third, 152 words fit. That is too many to read.
• Add an E in the first square and only five words are left:

• electret ₁₀
• elephant ₁₃
• emergent ₁₁
• eyepoint ₁₃
• eyesight ₁₅

Only one of these means "coming into view": EMERGENT. You did not have to think of the word, only recognize it.

Try the common endings

Many long words are a shorter root plus a common ending. Here is how often the main endings appear in our list:

• -ING is the most common ending other than S at every length from 9 to 13 letters. About one in ten words of 10 to 12 letters ends in ING.
• -ION and -TION become more common as words get longer. At 13 letters, about one word in twenty ends in ION.
• -ED ends about 8 or 9 percent of the words from 9 to 11 letters.
• -S ends 40 to 46 percent of the words from 9 to 13 letters, because the list includes plurals and verb forms.

The clue often tells you which ending to try. A plural clue usually has a plural answer, so the last square is probably S. A clue in the past tense ("Walked slowly") points to ED. A clue that defines a thing or an event ("Party to mark an achievement") is often a noun ending in ION or MENT.

Take Party to mark an achievement (11) with an E in the second square and a B in the fifth. That pattern alone matches 60 words. The answer is a noun, so try TION in the last four squares. That leaves two words, CELEBRATION and CEREBRATION, and the clue rules out the second.

TION is a good guess because it is so common: 456 eleven letter words in our list end in TION. If the guess is wrong, the search comes back empty or with nothing that fits the clue, and you can try another ending.

Cryptic clues

Most cryptic clues have two parts: a plain definition at the start or end, and wordplay that builds the same answer another way. The finder is most useful for anagrams, where the wordplay tells you to rearrange some letters in the clue.

Take Join up, with silent shuffling (6). The definition is "join up". "Shuffling" tells you to rearrange the letters of SILENT. Enter SILENT into Make Words With These Letters on the 6 letter word finder. When the number of letters matches the word length, the finder returns only words that use every letter. The six anagrams are:

• elints ₆
• enlist ₆
• inlets ₆
• listen ₆
• silent ₆
• tinsel ₆

Only ENLIST means "join up".

Other words that signal an anagram include "broken", "mixed", "wild", "badly" and "novel". If you also have crossing letters, enter them in their position boxes as well to shorten the list.

What the finder cannot do

• Phrases and names. Many crossword answers are phrases ("ONTHEGO") or proper names. The finder only lists single dictionary words, so if nothing fits, the answer may be one of these.
• Unchecked squares. In American style grids, every square belongs to two answers, so you always get crossing letters. In British style cryptic grids, many squares belong to only one answer, so you have fewer letters to search with and have to rely more on the wordplay.
• Obscure words. The word list is built for word games, so it includes many rare words that crosswords seldom use. If a result looks unfamiliar, check that it really fits the clue before you write it in.

Quick checklist

1. Solve the short crossing clues first. Each of the first few letters cuts the list to about a tenth.
2. Enter known letters in their position boxes and read the list against the clue.
3. Guess an ending from the clue: S for plurals, ED for past tense, or ING, ION or MENT.
4. For cryptic anagrams, enter the anagram letters and pick the word that fits the definition.