Feedback welcome as always, and we hope you enjoy it!

https://afpljournal.com/2026/09/01/crossword-054-september-2026/

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

As of 8:55am Eastern, there is an error in the WaPo mini crossword, making it impossible to solve correctly unless you know what the mistake is.

The error is in the grid itself. The only correct answer the puzzle will accept is ”chrckmate” instead of what obviously should be “checkmate.”

Anyone else have this issue?

ETA: this is in the end-of-the-week “meta” puzzle.

Introducing, A2D!
The Co-Op Thusword!

Do you enjoy solving crosswords with a partner? If so, our new co-operative option is for you. Tackle the day’s Thusword by sharing a link that lets you work on the puzzle together.

But when do we ever make Thusword that simple.

The catch is that one of you can only solve the Across clues, with the other only able to solve the Downs, so it’s a truly collaborative effort to complete the puzzle. This gameplay style gives the feature its name: Across to Down = A2D.

Head to Thusword.com to give it a go together.

A2D
Putting the us in Thusword

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Three clues led to head scratchers:

The first one was the worst.
Farm sounds: MobBoss

Unless they were talking about a mob boss burying bodies in a farm, this makes no sense.

The other two are:
Movie: FeelsSick
PenProducer: BoomMic

Hello all!

I'm an aspiring crossword constructor, and I've come to ask for some opinions on the clue wording for a puzzle I'm working on.

The theme is that each of the theme entries is a two-word phrase where the second word of one answer and the first word of the next answer also make a two-word phrase. It's kind of tough to explain so I quickly made a new set of answers to illustrate (I'm not using the answers in my actual puzzle--I want to keep it to myself for now in case it actually gets published!)

My example theme answers are HOUSEBROKEN, HEARTBURN, RUBBERSOUL, and SEARCHPARTY. The "extra" or "hidden" answers would be BROKENHEART, BURNRUBBER, and SOULSEARCH. The last word of the last theme answer would also lead into the first word of the first answer. So for illustrative purposes imagine that PARTYHOUSE is a commonly used term. (Frankly kind of sounds like it could be honestly.)

Each clue would include the second half of the clue for the previous "split" word and the first half of the next. What I would like to ask is whether everyone would prefer the clues to include the "together" answers, or just the "split" ones if you were to see this puzzle in the newspaper. So for my example the answers would be something like:

Option 1:

• ...abode / Like a dog who knows to go outside / Like someone...
• ...whose crush said no / Acid reflux symptom / Put the pedal...
• ...to the metal / Beatles album between "Help!" and "Revolver" / Do some...
• ...self-reflection / Posse looking for a missing person / Celebration...

Option 2:

• ...abode / Like someone...
• ...whose crush said no / Put the pedal...
• ...to the metal / Do some...
• ...self-reflection / Celebration...

I am truly conflicted as to which I would want to officially submit. Option 1 feels like it makes the theme more obvious and gives me more chances to make interesting clues for the "together" words, but I feel like it would technically be possible for someone to just get all of the answers without having to think about the theme at all. Option 2 feels trickier and like it would be more satisfying to figure out the theme, but I would be worried it might be too tricky since you would theoretically have no idea what to put in the themed answer spaces at first glance--kind of the inverse issue of option 1.

Anyway, long-winded way of asking for anyone's ideas and input! I personally have one way I'm leaning a bit more but I'm curious to know what other folks think.

Thanks for any feedback! :)

The puzzle itself is fine, but the "checker" is wrong. When you fill the puzzle out correctly, it will insist that you made a mistake.

The first letter of 1. Across/Down should be "I", but the checker has it as "U".

Just a heads up for anyone who likes to hit the daily freebies like me.

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

A daily puzzle where you need to unscramble real headlines!

In celebration of a recent announcement in Uma Musume, I decided to make a NYT-style crossword for fun!

Even if you don't play Uma Musume, I hope you can enjoy it as a sort-of themeless. I put some effort into (hopefully!) making the fill (and their clues) sort of nice. If anything, it was fun practice for me in crossword construction.

Caveats:

- The revealer and theme answers work best if you actually know Uma Musume, but it should be okay as long as yoy hace an idea what it is...

- Some of the fill may be a bit too niche / not balanced for a general audience (too much Japanese), but I am just doing this for fun.

- It has too many clues to be an NYT crossword; in particular, an editor would point out it has too many 3 letter answers

- There's more than a little bit of crosswordese. Sorry!

Step into the "14 Down" with today's crossword at Thusword.com!

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

What the title says. It doesn’t matter if you tap the X to close it. It keeps coming back.

I have built a word intersection algorithm, aka freeform/unbound crossword generator, which takes a list of words and tries to make a crossword-like grid with it, as compact and dense as possible.

You can try it here: clueless.crossword.is

The interface should be pretty intuitive, it now also supports adding clues. There are no accounts (yet). Puzzles can be downloaded as PNG file or shared by deeplink, and are automatically removed after a few months.

I have made substantial improvements over the usual approaches I found online for this challenge. The algorithm is a lot more powerful than it may seem at first glance. I spent a frankly absurd amount of time to get it right, and it performs much better than I originally aimed for.

I know some of you say these are not crosswords by strict definition, and you are not wrong! The algorithm can work with fixed templates but not very efficiently, other tools are better suited for that. Maybe calling it a "crossword generator" is a little presumptuous. Still, I hope you will appreciate what the algorithm can do, and that you will have fun with that.

I would love to hear what you think of it, if you have interesting results to share, use cases or if you find bugs, or have suggestions for improvements.

P.s. There is no AI involved in the process.

TL;DR

1. Crossword based on Indian pop-culture, events and history
2. Every India-clue is hand-written or hand-edited. WordNet clues for regular English words are edited as needed.
3. The wordlist is manually vetted - I have removed/added several words, and keep doing so each day with the edit pass.
4. I solve and edit each puzzle before it publishes
5. AI helped me build the grid-filling software, such software has been standard in crossword construction for some time now.

The puzzle can speak for itself.

----

I have been solving the NYT crosswords for years now, it’s my daily activity for the post-lunch stroll. I love everything about it, except the heavy leanings on American pop culture, current events and history. I get it, it is NYT after all. And I do myself getting stuck, with no clue whatsoever about the, er, clue.
Then recently I heard my partner say the same thing.
So I decided to make a version with the culture/events/history from India.

Full disclosure - the application is written with the help of AI, but I have vetted the wordlist (built by AI and partially scrapped), and I add words manually to the list as well.
The clues are either from WordNet (for regular English words) or written entirely by hand by me for the India-centric answers. Each night I fully edit a crossword - replacing words, writing clues - before publishing it for the next day.

I have a great time with the NYT crosswords, learning trivia in bits and pieces when I need to look something up. I’m hoping some of you might feel the same about India when doing Crossee (that’s crossword + coffee, just made it up because I love coffee).

Give it a go!

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?

I've completed 1891 puzzles and there are no more for me to complete? Did I just do every puzzle in the archive or is something wrong?

Had a dream last night that someone here posted complaining about AI ruining the day’s NYT crossword. When I opened the crossword up there was one answer already filled in, I was unable to use my keyboard and I had to prompt AI to fill in each answer for me lmao. And for some reason it wasn’t honoring my dark mode theme and was blindingly white.

Please don’t get any ideas NYT

I've been doing crosswords for awhile now and feel like I'm not improving anymore. I can solve a Monday NYT crossword and maybe a Tuesday. After that, the trivia and wordplay just do not click and it feels more like a chore to look up a random 19th century poet or singer from the 50s.

How do you solve the Crossword? More importantly, when you get stuck what is your next step? I've walked away and came back, turned on auto check, Googled around, and it doesn't seem to be getting any easier or faster.

Spoilers are welcome in here, beware!

How was the puzzle?