🔡 Codeword
🔤 Word · 2 playsCodeword
A crossword with no clues: every letter has become a number, and the cipher is yours to break.
About Codeword
A filled crossword grid has been enciphered, each of the twenty-six letters replaced throughout by a number, and the puzzle is to recover the alphabet. A few starting letters are given, and everything else is deduction from the shape of English: a single-letter word is A or I, a doubled letter narrows quickly, and the pattern of a long word with two letters placed frequently admits only one candidate. Each identification propagates instantly to every square carrying that number, so the grid falls in accelerating stages — the last few letters all but announce themselves.
How to Play
Select a number in the grid, then choose the letter you believe it stands for; it fills in everywhere at once. Every number from 1 to 26 represents a different letter of the alphabet. Start from the given letters and the short words, and revise freely — nothing is final until it all reads true.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Open with the givens and grind them everywhere. Each starting letter fills every cell of its number, and the half-made words that result are the real starting material — a pattern like _EE_ or TH_ narrows fast. Short words carry the most constraint per letter: a two-letter word has perhaps a dozen candidates in English, and a single placed letter usually settles it.
Use letter behaviour, not just letter frequency. E, S, T and A are common, but position tells you more: a number that keeps appearing at the ends of words leans toward S, E or D; one that starts several words leans toward S, C or T; a number doubled mid-word is most often L, S, E, O or T. A number sitting alone as a one-letter word is A or I, and the choice usually decides several crossings at once.
Hunt the giveaway patterns: a three-letter word ending in a doubled pair suggests ALL or TOO; the pattern consonant-H opening a word makes the H's partner C, S, T or W; and Q's number, wherever it lurks, names U's number in the next cell. Since all twenty-six letters appear somewhere, the rare letters must be hiding — late in the solve, the unassigned numbers are J, Q, X, Z and friends, and asking where a Z could legally sit often finishes the grid.
Commit provisionally and read your work aloud. A wrong guess in a codeword announces itself within two or three propagations as an unpronounceable string, so the cheap strategy is: place the likeliest letter, follow its consequences, and retract without sentiment the moment a word goes wrong. The grid is self-correcting if you listen to it.