Crossword puzzles are excellent brain teasers. The easy ones take a few minutes while the most complicated ones can take days. It's a good way to learn new things and it's one of the most popular word puzzles in the world. As it turns out, we sometimes bite off more than we can chew. There are actually a bunch of apps and websites to help with such instances. Here are the best crossword solvers for Android, iPhone, iPad, and the web.
- Anagram Solver (Android)
- Crossword Clue Solver (Android)
- Crossword Solver by Havos (Android)
- CS by LithiumApps (Android)
- Crossword Solver King (Android)
- Across Lite Crosswords (iPad only)
- Anagram Solver (iPhone/iPad)
- The Crossword & Anagram Solver (iPhone/iPad)
- Crossword Solver by Havos (iPhone/iPad)
- Clue Solver (iPhone/iPad)
- Crossword Heaven (web)
- Crossword Solver (web)
- Dictionary.com (web)
- Google Search (web)
- Wordplays (web)
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What makes a good crossword helper?
There are dozens of websites and apps that work for this. However, the vast majority are rather simple. The best ones include modern references and potentially even pop culture solutions along with the usual stuff. Every app and site on this list can do the basics and at least a little extra on top of that. Additionally, all of the crossword solvers on this list are either free, free with ads, or have a single premium cost. There are no subscriptions here!
For the Apple App Store crossword solvers, they should work for both iPhone and iPad unless otherwise noted. We'll go in alphabetical order so we'll start with Android and then move on to iOS and finally the web.
Android crossword solvers
Anagram Solver
Price: Free / $3.99
Anagram Solver does two different things. It solves anagrams and it also helps with crossword puzzles. It supports blank spots so you can look for almost any word as long as you know at least part of it. Additionally, the app has word definitions, various hints and tips, and some additional features. It's a relatively simple app and it works as both an anagram solver and a crossword puzzle solver.
Crossword Clue Solver
Price: Free
Crossword Clue Solver can help solve a crossword in two different ways. The first is a search via the clue. You simply type in the clue to get some ideas. The other way is similar to how most of these crossword solvers work. You simply input the letters you know and periods for the letters you don't and the app guesses words from there. It uses an online database so there is no offline support. Otherwise, the app is free and supported by ads.
Crossword Solver by Havos
Price: Free / $2.49
Crossword Solver is an unimaginative name, but it seems to work well. The app boasts just under 200,000 proper nouns along with basically every word in the dictionary. That should help find more stuff than usual. Additionally, there are various filters to reduce the list of possibilities, five puzzle solving modes, and even some foreign language words. The UI looks ancient, but it's easy enough to use. The pro version of this app seems to do a lot better than the free version so keep that in mind if you try the free version first.
Crossword Solver by LithiumApps
Price: Free
Crossword Solver by LithiumApps is one of the newer crossword solvers on the list. It has quite a decent set of features, including over 400,000 words, offline support, and an anagram solver on top of the crossword solver capabilities. Additionally, you can find word definitions and audio pronunciations if you need those things. The UI is simple enough even if it doesn't look overly impressive. It also supports blank or unknown letters. It works offline for most of its functions, but you need the Internet to look up definitions.
Crossword Solver King
Price: Free / $3.99
Crossword Solver King is another one of the more competent crossword solvers. It comes with over 280,000 words available offline. Additionally, it supports missing letters, solves anagrams, and has a bunch of filters to help narrow down your searches. It also integrates with this English Offline Dictionary for even more offline functionality. It worked well enough in our tests and it's actually the same developer as Anagram Solver above. The pro version removes ads, lowers the needed permissions to zero, and more.
More posts about dictionaries!
iPhone and iPad crossword solvers
Across Lite Crosswords (iPad only)
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Across Lite Crosswords is an iPad app for crossword fans. It features an exceptionally advanced solver along with some actual crossword puzzles. There are a variety of filters, blank letter support, and other tools to help you narrow things down as much as possible. Additionally, the app has support for both left and right handed folks and some other neat features. You can use it as a solver, but the developer says it may not work for crosswords that aren't Across Lite formatted.
Anagram Solver
Price: Free / $2.99
Anagram Solver is primarily for solving anagrams and for games like Words With Friends and Scrabble. However, one of the features includes crossword solvers along with some features. It has over 280,000 offline words, multi-word support, blank letter support, and a bunch of filters for refining search results. The crossword solver is mostly just an extension of the anagram solver with support for more blank letters. Thus, you probably won't be able to use just this on its own. Still, it's quite good at what it does and the price tag is relatively cheap.
The Crossword & Anagram Solver
Price: Free / $1.99-$2.99
The Crossword & Anagram Solver is not the most unique name, but it's an effective app. It works very much like Anagram Solver above. You enter in your letters along with the blank spaces and get a bunch of potential word matches. The app also supports anagram unscrambling, iOS Dark Mode, and you can see definitions for words in the app. The anagram stuff requires a $1.99 in-app purchase or you can get it and remove ads for a single $2.99 payment. Like Anagram Solver above, it's a useful tool but it probably won't find every answer you might need.
Crossword Solver
Price: Free / $0.99
Crossword Solver is a simple, basic app. It's by Havoc, the same developer of the Android app above. Thus, it has a lot of the same features. That includes over 200,000 proper nouns, places, movies, books, songs, and other pop culture references. Additionally, there are 150,000 synonyms, support for blank or missing letters, and it includes support for English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and, surprisingly, Latin. It doesn't work too well with puzzle clues, but it can help you fill in the blanks with the best of them.
Crossword Clue Solver
Price: Free
Crossword Clue Solver is one of the few iPhone and iPad crossword solvers that actually works with clues. You can type in parts of the clue to see various words and it still does the word search with missing letters like all of the others. The UI is clean and efficient, but that also means the app doesn't have a ton of extra features. It gets the job done, though, and it's free to download to use.
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Website crossword solvers
Crossword Heaven
Price: Free
Crossword Heaven is an excellent, if simple website for crossword solving. The app has links to crosswords from the Washington Times, New York Times, LA Times, and USA Today. We assume it tunes its crossword solver to those specific crosswords. The website is rather easy to use with simple banner ads that never feel too intrusive. You can search by clue and you can input the parts of the answer you know with support for blank spaces. It's a good, simple site overall.
Crossword Solver
Price: Free
Crossword Solver is another simple website that helps you fill in the blanks pretty well. This one also works well as an anagram solver if you need one of those. You choose how many letters the word has and fill in the letters you already know. The website then gives you a list of potential words. If you use the tabs toward the top, you can also use the Clue Database section to look up clues, although this was hit-and-miss in our experience. It's a solid, competent website for some quick crossword help.
Dictionary.com
Price: Free
Dictionary.com has a lot more than dictionaries as we were surprised to find out while researching this article. It has a whole section on the official website for word games, including a Words With Friends and Scrabble cheat section along with a couple of crossword solvers. You input the clue and tell the engine the known letters. It then tries to guess from there along with a percentage of how sure the site is about its answer. It's a little bit finicky until you get used to it. For instance, it doesn't just know that Pet Cematary's author is Stephen King until I added a couple of known letters from his name. So it takes some work, but it does work with clue searches if you're patient enough.
Google Search
Price: Free
We realize that Google Search is kind of a laughably obvious answer, but that doesn't make it suddenly bad. You can look up all kinds of pop culture references, clues, and other tidbits to help yourself. It's also great for weirdly vague hints as well as obvious ones you just can't remember. Of course, you can use Google Search to find other crossword solvers for basically platform. In fact, we used it rather heavily while looking for potential entrants for this very list.
Wordplays
Price: Free
Wordplays is a decent site for crossword solvers and anagram solvers. It works better than average, although we do wish it had better pop culture support. In any case, you simply enter keywords from the clue and the letters you already know to see a list of potential answers. Additionally, the site lets you take an answer and search for clever clues for you crossword sculptors out there. It should work quite well for simpler answers and most non-proper nouns.
More posts about apps and games!
If we missed any great crossword solvers, tell us about them in the comments! You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists!
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