Clueless Crosswords™
The world's greatest crossword generator
About Clueless Crosswords
The Clueless Crossword generator tackles the problem of freeform crossword generation, with the goal of producing results that are both reasonably consistent and dense.
This turns out to be a really hard computational problem because the solution space has a very high degree of freedom: there are many possible placements, many local optima, and many ways for candidate layouts to conflict as the grid evolves.
The generator produces dense, consistent layouts while using the full list of words you provide.
It can also tightly pack a constrained grid with as many words as possible from a larger corpus. Finally, it can recreate a fixed-form crossword from only the list of words, without any prior knowledge of the original geometry.
A technical explanation of how the algorithm works is currently in progress. Source code will also be made available in the future for people who want to explore, learn from, and build on the project. Stay informed/reach out by mailing info@crossword.is.
In progress
- Detailed algorithm write-up
- Public source release
- Additional examples and benchmarks
- Additional web features for usability, such as an online solver and adding clues
Credits
- Concept, Design, Development and Algorithm by Frido Emans