About CRSWRD

What you can play

• Daily: one 7×7 crossword a day, the same grid for everyone, with a leaderboard and a streak. Puzzle #1 was published on September 12, 2026, and every day since is in the archive.
• Practice: authored 5×5 puzzles in three clue styles, with guided hints and a strategy coach. Progress stays in this browser.
• Rush: 5×5 minis timed to the hundredth of a second, with a fresh board every day.
• Race: up to eight players on the same grid at the same instant; the fastest correct grid wins.
• Co-op: up to twelve people filling one shared grid, with everyone's cursor visible.
• Duel: a turn-based tile game for two, against a friend or the computer.

Race, Co-op and Duel start from the Arena. A room is just a link, so the people you invite do not need to sign up for anything. The rules for every mode are on How to play.

How our puzzles are made

Daily and Rush grids are built by a deterministic generator. For a given day it always produces the same puzzle: it picks a grid pattern, fills it with a backtracking search over a curated word bank, and then picks each clue from the clue bank. Words on a blocklist of rude and offensive terms can never enter a grid, and the finished fill is checked against the blocklist again before it is used.

The first time a daily is generated it is saved in CRSWRD's database. Later edits to the word or clue banks change future puzzles only, so a past puzzle in the archive never changes after people have played it.

The practice collection is authored, with different clue styles for the same grid and guided hints for every clue. Optional AI hints can reframe a clue; unsuitable or unavailable replies fall back to guided help. AI does not generate live daily puzzles or decide whether your grid is correct. Read the AI hint guide for details.

What data CRSWRD keeps

• An identity cookie. When you first play CRSWRD sets crswrd_p, a signed, HttpOnly cookie holding a random player id and your display name. A companion cookie, crswrd_pid, holds only the id, so cached identity and result data stays separate when different players use the same device.
• Nothing in the database until you do something. A player record is created only when you submit a result, finish a multiplayer game that counts, change your name or add a passkey.
• Results and streaks. Each solve is stored with its puzzle, time, and whether it was clean, checked or revealed, along with your streak, totals, and Race, Co-op and Duel games and wins. Your display name appears on leaderboards and in rooms.
• Usage counts. Page visits, puzzle starts, solves, nudges, room starts and room ends are recorded as events in Cloudflare Analytics Engine to see how the site is used, along with page-speed measurements (Core Web Vitals: the kind of page, the metric, its value and rating, and whether the device is a phone or a computer). Events hold coarse labels and numbers, without player IDs, display names, room codes or typed letters, such as the mode, a solve time, the kind of page or the kind of site that linked to it.
• No third-party trackers and no ads. There are no advertising or analytics scripts from other companies.
• Passkeys are optional. If you add one to use your identity on another device, CRSWRD stores the passkey's public key. There is no password and no e-mail address to store.

Solo progress, practice completions and settings are saved in this browser. Live multiplayer state is shared with the room. Visit Privacy & analytics choices to see the details and turn optional browser measurements off.

Contact

Found a bad clue, a bug, or something that does not add up? Write to hello@crswrd.com. Common questions are answered in the FAQ, and the stats page shows ranked solves and median times for recent puzzles.