Ultimate Word & Text Toolkit

Crossword Word Finder

Type the crossing letters you already have and a question mark for every empty square. The pattern length matches the length of the slot.

Runs entirely in your browser — your text is never uploaded

Type the letters you know and a question mark (?) for every unknown letter. The pattern length is the word length, so ?a??e finds five-letter words with an “a” second and an “e” last.

Enter a pattern using ? for unknown letters.

How to use Crossword Word Finder

  1. Count the squares in the slot and type that many characters.
  2. Use the letters you already have and ? for empty squares.
  3. Optionally add letters the answer must contain.
  4. Copy the answer that matches your clue.

Examples

Input

?a??e

Result

cable, dance, table, value

Input

??ss???

Result

passage, message, mission

What you can type into Crossword Word Finder

The pattern
One character per square: the letters you have already written, and ? for each empty square. ?a??e is five squares with A second and E last.
Extra letters
If a crossing tells you a letter appears somewhere but not where, add it to the contains field instead of guessing a position.
Ignored characters
Spaces, digits and other wildcards such as * or _ are stripped before the search runs.

How the results behave

Exact square count
The pattern length is the answer length, so miscounting squares is the usual reason a search returns nothing.
No clue interpretation
This matches letters only. It cannot read the clue, so judge which candidate fits the wordplay yourself.

Tips

  • Count the squares twice before typing, then work the crossings that give you a first or last letter.
  • If nothing matches, remove your least certain letter and search again with a ? in its place.

Common mistakes

  • Entering the clue instead of the pattern.
  • Forgetting that multi-word answers appear without a space in the grid but as separate words in a dictionary, so they will not match.

About the crossword word finder

Crossword solvers with a partly filled grid, and anyone working through a fill-in-the-blank puzzle where the number of squares is known.

Crossword slots are usually solved from their crossing letters rather than the clue alone. Once two or three squares are filled, a pattern search normally reduces the possibilities to a short list.

This finder matches against a general English dictionary of common words, so very obscure crossword-only answers and proper nouns will not appear.

Accuracy and limitations

  • Cryptic answers, phrases, proper nouns and abbreviations that crosswords favour are often outside a general word list.
  • Results come from this site's own list of about 16,750 words drawn from common written English. It is not an official game or tournament dictionary: rare, technical and inflected words can be missing, while some names, place names and abbreviations are included even though most word games would reject them. Always check a result against the rules of the game you are playing.

Frequently asked questions

How do I enter an empty square?

Use a question mark (?) for each empty square. The total number of characters is the slot length.

Are proper nouns included?

No. The dictionary contains common English words only, so names and places are not listed.

Read more

Ready-made word lists

Prefer to browse instead of search? These lists are already built.

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