Daily Crossword

Controls

Mouse on a computer, touch on a phone or tablet. Some games also take the arrow keys or the letter keys, and the game will say so when it starts.

Take it with you

Scan to open Daily Crossword on your phone.

The Daily Crossword is the one most people settle on. It is not the easiest puzzle here and it is not the hardest, which turns out to be the reason it lasts. A crossword that always beats you stops being fun, and one that never does stops being interesting.

The part worth knowing about is the archive. Every puzzle stays available after its day is over, so missing a Tuesday does not mean losing it. You can go back and play the one you skipped, which is the difference between a habit and a chore.

How to play Daily Crossword

A new grid appears each day, and every white square belongs to one across answer and one down answer.

Click a square to select it. The clue for that entry is highlighted.
Click the same square again to switch between across and down.
Type your answer. The cursor moves along on its own.
Arrow keys move square by square. Tab jumps to the next clue.
Click any clue in the list to go straight to its place in the grid.

Nothing has to be filled in order, and experienced solvers rarely do. The usual method is one pass through the across clues writing only what you are certain of, then a second pass where the crossing letters make the rest obvious.

Check will confirm a single letter, a whole answer or the entire grid without changing anything. Reveal fills it in for you. The timer can be turned off if you would rather not be watched, and the puzzle saves itself, so you can close the tab and come back to the same board.

Tips and strategy

Answer the fill in the blank clues first. They have exactly one answer, no misdirection, and they hand you free crossing letters in every corner of the grid.
The title of a puzzle is not decoration. When a crossword is themed, the title tells you what the longest answers have in common, and working that out often gives you two or three long entries at once.
Three and four letter answers are the scaffolding. Get those in and the long entries stop looking impossible.
If a clue and its answer disagree on tense or number, the answer is wrong even when the letters fit. Plural clue, plural answer, every time.
A question mark at the end of a clue means the answer is a pun. Stop reading it literally.
Use the archive deliberately. Solving the same setter day after day teaches you their habits faster than any word list.