Crossword Puzzles (Crosswords) 
A crossword puzzle (crosswords) is a word puzzle that takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of white and shaded squares. The goal is to fill the crosswords white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages which are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right and from top to bottom. The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
Squares in which answers begin are usually numbered. The crossword puzzles clues are then referred to by these numbers and a direction, for example, "4-Across" or "20-Down". At the end of the clue the total number of letters is sometimes given, depending on the style of crossword puzzles and country of publication. Some crosswords will also indicate the number of words in a given answer, should there be more than one.
The free crossword puzzles are available in the 11x11, 13x13 and 15x15 size. In order to change the printable crossword puzzles size, select the wanted size below and press the change size botton.
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Crossword Puzzles History (from Wikipedia)
The first example of a crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine "Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica". It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled "Per passare il tempo" ("To pass the time"). Airoldi's puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares, but it included horizontal and vertical clues.On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, England, published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor. Later, the name of the puzzle was changed to "crossword". Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the World, and spread to other newspapers; the Boston Globe, for example was publishing them at least as early as 1917. By the 1920s, the crossword phenomenon was starting to attract notice. In 1921, the New York Public Library reported that "The latest craze to strike libraries is the crossword puzzle," and complained that when "the puzzle 'fans' swarm to the dictionaries and encyclopedias so as to drive away readers and students who need these books in their daily work, can there be any doubt of the Library's duty to protect its legitimate readers?".
The first book of crossword puzzles appeared in 1924, published by Simon and Schuster. "This odd-looking book with a pencil attached to it" was an instant hit and crossword puzzles became the craze of 1924. Initially, some viewed the crossword puzzle with alarm, and some expected (even hoped) that it would be a short-lived fad.A clergyman called the working of crossword puzzles "the mark of a childish mentality" and said "There is no use for persons to pretend that working one of the puzzles carries any intellectual value with it."
In 1930 a correspondent noted that "Together with The Times of London, yours is the only journal of prominence that has never succumbed to the lure of the cross-word puzzle" and said that "The craze—the fad—stage has passed, but there are still people numbering it to the millions who look for their daily cross-word puzzle as regularly as for the weather predictions." The New York Times, however, was not to publish a crossword puzzle until 1942. The term crossword first appeared in a dictionary in 1930. Today, there are many popular crosswords distributed in American newspapers and online. The most prestigious (and among the most difficult to solve) are the New York Times puzzles. The first editor of the New York Times crossword was Margaret Farrar, who was editor from 1942 to 1969. She was succeeded by Will Weng, who was succeeded by Eugene T. Maleska. In 1978 Shortz founded and still directs the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The British cryptic crosswords was imported to the US in 1968 by composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim in New York magazine. Until 2006, the Atlantic Monthly regularly featured a cryptic crosswords "puzzler" by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, which combines cryptic clues with diabolically ingenious variations on the construction of the puzzle itself. In both cases, no two puzzles are alike in construction, and the intent of the puzzle authors is to entertain with novelty, not to establish new variations of the crossword genre. In the United Kingdom, the Sunday Express was the first newspaper to publish a crossword on November 2, 1924, a Wynne puzzle adapted for the UK. The first crosswords in Britain, according to Tony Augarde in his "Oxford Guide to Word Games" (1984), were in "Pearson's Magazine" for February 1922.
General info about online crossword puzzles
Free crossword puzzles online, Articles
» printable crossword puzzles, Reading Help Boost Memory Among the Less Educated
To boost memory power, frequently engaging in mental exercises such as word games, free crosswords puzzles and reading may help less educated people, say researchers.It is said education plays a key role in lifelong memory performance and risk for dementia, and it's well documented that those with a college degree possess a cognitive advantage over their less educated counterparts in middle and old age...
» Crosswords puzzles can delay memory loss (telegraph.co.uk)
Researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York, found that performing a mental exercise (crossword puzzles) twice a day could help delay the rapid memory loss associated with dementia for more than a year.
» printable Crossword puzzles burn up to 90 calories per hour
Brain training experts confirmed today that mental exercise such as crosswords, crossnumbers and Sudoku can burn an average of 90 calories every hour.
Free printable crossword puzzles related links
» Crossword - Wikipedia
A crossword puzzle is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of white and shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages.....read more about crosswords
» Cross figures(cross numbers)-Wikipedia
A cross figure (also variously called cross number puzzle or figure logic) is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries which consist of numbers rather than words, with individual digits being entered in the blank cells. The numbers can be clued in various ways...more
» Word Search-Wikipedia
A words search, word find, word seek, word sleuth or mystery word puzzle is a word game that is letters of a word in a grid, that usually has a rectangular or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and mark all the words hidden inside the box..more
» Fill In Puzzles - Wikipedia
Fill-Ins are a type of logic puzzle commonly printed in various puzzle magazines. While they superficially resemble crossword puzzles, they do not require any form of "outside knowledge"; unlike a crossword, one can solve a Fill-In in a non-native tongue, even one with an alternate character set..more
» One Across - Search for Crossword Puzzle Answers
free help with crossword puzzles, anagrams and cryptograms - search to find answers to crossword puzzle clues.
» Crossword solver - Get help with crosswords and find solutions to your puzzles
"The Crossword Solver will help you solve those tricky clues that have you stumped.