Codeword — free online cipher crossword

A codeword is a filled crossword with the letters taken out. Every square holds a number instead, the same number wherever that letter appears, and you are given three of them to start. There are no clues and no word list. Everything else comes from the crossings, from which letters can plausibly sit next to each other, and from the shape English words tend to have.

The grids here are built out of ordinary words and then checked to read exactly one way: there is no second set of letters that would make every across and down entry a real word. That check is done before the puzzle is ever dealt, which is why the answer you reach is the answer. Free, no download, and a part-finished grid is saved if you close the tab.

How to play

• Tap a square, then tap a letter. The letter fills every square holding that number, all at once.
• The three green squares are the letters you were given.
• A letter already used somewhere is dimmed on the keyboard, because no two numbers share a letter.
• Tap ⌫ Clear letter to take back the letter on the selected square, everywhere it appears.
• The grid is done when every square holds the right letter. Nothing is marked wrong along the way.

How to break into a grid with no clues

Start with the short entries. A one-letter word is A or I. A two-letter word is drawn from a small set — of, to, in, it, is, be, as, at, so, we, he, by, or, on, do, if, me, my, up, an, go, no, us, am — and once you have a couple of those, the letters they share with longer entries do a lot of work. Three-letter entries ending in the same number as several others usually end in S or E.

The next tool is letter frequency. In ordinary English text the order runs roughly E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, and in a crossword grid the vowels are spread far more evenly than in prose because every entry needs them. So the number that appears most often is usually a vowel, and a number appearing in nearly every long entry is almost always E. Counting how many times each number appears takes ten seconds and is worth more than any single guess.

The third tool is position. Q is always followed by U. A doubled number inside a word is one of a short list — LL, SS, EE, OO, TT, FF, RR, NN — and doubles at the end of a short word are usually LL or SS. A number that starts several entries but ends none is likely to be a consonant such as T, S or C. Between the frequency count and the doubles, most grids give way in a couple of minutes. If you like this, Word Fit is the same shape of puzzle with the words supplied and the placement removed, and Cryptogram uses the same cipher on a single sentence.

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