FREE CROSSWORD PUZZLE MAKER FOR MAC SOFTWARE

Tech support is a toll call to northern California and is excellent. Along with the weak clues, that’s Crossword Wizard’s only real drawback. You can’t add your own words to the dictionary. Would you know that Doha is the expected answer for “national capital”? However, the dictionary has many odd and rarely used words, and it frequently comes up with weak clues. Watching Crossword Wizard build a puzzle from scratch is a pleasure. The words and tips the program generates can easily be edited. For example, you can specify ten related words and let Crossword Wizard do the rest, resulting in a theme puzzle using your ten words. You can choose any level of computer assistance in between. Puzzle-creating options range from letting the program do all the work to creating a puzzle from scratch using your own words and hints. It can’t create acrostics, odd shapes, or any other crossword subgenre, however. But it excels at creating traditional-style puzzles up to 21 by 21 boxes square. It’s unique among word games I’ve used.Ĭrossword Wizard comes with a mere five premade puzzles, and they’re only soso. Idea Wizard can run as a stand-alone application and is useful for improving your vocabulary. Other puzzle-solving aids are Word Builder, which provides a list of all possible words, from the program’s 70,000-word dictionary, that fit a selected square and Idea Wizard, which shows definitions, related words, and grammatical data about any word in the dictionary. Even better are the optional audio hints, which perform the same function aloud. Optional visual hints tell you if the last letter you typed is correct. If you want to solve the puzzle in a different order, you can do that, too. Navigating and filling in puzzles using the keyboard and mouse is fast and easy, with color and sound used to excellent effect.Īs you fill in a puzzle, the program is smart enough to move to the next logical open box or word without your intenention.

The puzzle-solving mechanics and options of Crossword Wizard are brilliant.

FREE CROSSWORD PUZZLE MAKER FOR MAC SOFTWARE

Computers should be ideal crossword-puzzle creators and players, but that’s not been the case, with earlier software attempts being either too simplistic or too difficult to set up and use. Crossword Wizard meets a need long unsatisfied.

Free crossword puzzle maker for mac