Thomas Joseph 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 Thomas Joseph Crossword on your phone.

The Thomas Joseph Crossword is one of the long running syndicated dailies, and it has a reputation among solvers for being fair. Clues say what they mean. There is very little trickery, and almost no crosswordese that exists only because it fits.

It is smaller than a Sunday puzzle and finishable on a break, which is why people who solve one crossword a day tend to solve this one.

How to play Thomas Joseph Crossword

A new grid each day. Every white square belongs to one across answer and one down answer, and both have to read correctly.

Click a square to start. The matching clue is highlighted.
Click it again to flip between across and down.
Type. The cursor advances by itself, and the arrow keys move it manually.
Tab moves to the next clue in the list. Click a clue to jump to it.

The grid is compact, so a single long answer touches a lot of the puzzle. Finding one of those early changes the whole board.

Check and reveal are there if you want them, for one letter, one answer, or everything at once.

Tips and strategy

Read every clue once before writing anything. In a puzzle this size you will be certain of six or seven straight away, and those are scattered across the grid rather than clustered.
Fill in the short across answers first. Three letter words are the cheapest crossing letters you will get.
The corners are the hardest part of a compact grid, because they have the fewest crossings. Leave them until the middle is solid.
If a clue gives you a tense or a plural, your answer has to match it. That is the single most common way a wrong answer survives longer than it should.
Abbreviated clues want abbreviated answers. Anything ending in Abbr. or written as initials is telling you the length before you have counted the squares.