To type Horizontally
To type Vertically
This topic describes how to edit the crossword grid by hand. See the New Puzzle topic for a guide to creating puzzles automatically, see the Create Vocabulary Puzzle topic for how to make the program build a puzzle for you from a short list of words, or see the AutoFill and AutoFind topics for how to put words into the grid.
You enter letters from the current cursor position by typing as normal. Insert black squares (blocks) by pressing the space bar or double-clicking with the mouse. In the puzzle there are usually words going in two directions; to change the direction of typing press tab, or click on the direction icon on the Toolbar. The cursor changes to show the type direction:
You can use the cursors to move round the puzzle, or click with the left mouse button to move to a certain square.
For a full list of keyboard commands see the Keyboard topic.
You can fill in some of the pattern or black squares (blocks) by using the Fill Blocks command on the Grid menu, or use a grid library to use a pre-designed grid pattern..
To automatically insert blocks in symmetrical positions select one of the Symmetry options on the Grid menu.
Use one of the Style Checking options on the Grid menu to highlight squares that are misplaced according to various popular standard puzzle styles.
You can create irregular puzzles by removing unwanted squares from the puzzle. Press Ctrl+Delete with the cursor on the square to be removed. To remove all blank squares from the puzzle, select the Remove Blanks command from the Grid menu. This makes the puzzle only have lines around the squares with letters or blocks in, so giving it an irregular outline.
You can Undo editing by pressing Alt + Backspace. This moves the cursor to the end of the last editing action and then undoes the action. You can repeat undo a large number of times to undo whole chunks of the puzzle. Undo does not remove interlocking letters, so your intersecting words are left intact.
You can move words around using the commands on the edit menu, Ctrl+C to copy a word, Ctrl+V to paste a word and Ctrl+X to cut a word. If you want to paste in a word starting at a particular point in the grid use Ctrl+Shift+V, otherwise it will be pasted starting at the beginning of the current word slot.
Once you have designed a grid, or part of grid, that you are sure you want to keep, you can lock it to prevent accidental changes. Under the Lock item on the Grid menu there are options to lock the entire grid pattern and letters, or just to lock the block pattern, the current word, or the currently selected squares. Once you have locked something you will not be able to change it until you unlock it, by reselecting the Lock menu item or using Unlock all at the bottom of the Lock menu.
As you are designing the grid, the Grid Insight feature will analyse the empty square to see if it is possible to fill them with your default word list. If a fill is not possible, the slots will be highlighted, and the stats bar will show the problem when the cursor is on the problem slot. If a fill requires a particular letter in a given square, the forced letter is shown in gray. It will also analyse words in the grid, and highlight duplicate words, or (if you have the Pro Grid Filler and that option selected), duplicate substrings.