Play Cross Wordle – A Free Online Word Puzzle Game

HOW TO PLAY

Cross Wordle combines the challenge of crosswords with the excitement of Wordle. Your objective is to find all the words in the puzzle within a specified number of guesses or within a certain time limit.

• Game Variations: There are three game variations - Flexible, Serial, and Timed. See below for a detailed explanation of each variation
• Getting Started: First game is pre-selected for you, so you are ready to go!. In future games, you can select the number of words you want in your puzzle, and how many letters you want in each word
• Making a guess: Just start typing and your guess will show up in one of the words on the puzzle
• Guess Status: Largely the same as Wordle. Green is right letter in right place. Orange is right letter wrong place.

Each category is explained in more detail below

GAME VARIATIONS

Want a quick game? Want more of a challenge? At the start of each game, you have the opportunity to select the number of words in the puzzle, as well as the number of letters in each word.

• Flexible: At any point in the game, you can choose which word you want to solve
• Serial: You have to solve words sequentially in a predetermined order
• Timed: See how many words you can solve in five minutes

HOW TO PLAY

Flexible and Serial Game Mode

In all multi-word puzzles, one of the words will be highlighted in red. This is the word you are "working on". As mentioned above, in flexible game mode, you can select any word to work on. In serial game mode, the order is pre-determined and can not be changed.

Keep guessing words until you solve all the words in the puzzle or you run out of guesses.

To get started, enter your guess using the keyboard. Your input will appear in blue within the highlighted word. Only valid words from the Scrabble dictionary are accepted.

Upon pressing ENTER, your guess is then applied to every word in the puzzle. In this example, applying "RADIO" to all the words resulted in the situation where no letters are in the correct location in the highlighted word (e.g. no greens) but that it turns out the "A", "I", and "O" were correct in some of the other words.

Timed Game Mode

In timed game mode, you will be presented with a single word, and you have five minutes to solve as many hidden words as you can. Keep guessing words until you run out of time. See if you can beat your personal best!

DISPLAYING PUZZLE STATUS

General Status

The main puzzle panel provides a cumulative view of all previous guesses, allowing you to track your overall progress and identify the words that are closest to being solved. As you can see in the diagram, some words have three greens (e.g. three letters in the correct location) and some have one. This is useful when deciding on which word to next work on. However, to really solve a word, you need to view the detailed status (see next).

Detailed Status

The detailed status for the highlighted word is displayed below the main puzzle panel. There are three types of detailed status, starting at the bottom and working up:

• Keyboard: Displays letters used already and their status relative to the highlighted (hidden) word. Green and Orange status denote the usual status. Grey status means the letter has been used, but does not exist in the word. White status means the letter has not been tried.
• Status: Shows all guesses made and how that guess matches matches to the hidden word. Note that this status is scrollable for larger puzzles. This is the status that any Wordle player would recognize.
• Correct: Indicates which letters in the word are correct and their positions. That same "green" information is shown as general status on the puzzle panel.

Intersection Status

Intersections between two words will be a new concept to Wordle-like players. But they can be your friend too! Look at the diagram on the right. The letter "A" actually has never been used as the first letter in any guess, yet in the "correct" panel, and in the keyboard status, the "A" shows up in a transparent-green. The reason for this is because, although it has never been used as the first letter in a guess, you know it must exist there because it is correct in the across-word that intersects with it. So "inherited" green status will always show up as a transparent green. Once you actually enter a guess using "A" as the first letter, then the status will turn into a solid green color.

Solved Status

In flexible and serial game mode, once you guess all the letters in a specific word, the cells in that word will all turn green, and the hidden word will be displayed. Time to move on to the next word!

In timed mode, once you guess all the letters in a word, the letters are displayed all in solid green,) (no letters) and then that is replaced by a new word. The status for that word, based on prior guess is then displayed.

STUCK?

Sometimes, you just can't think of the word. If you need a hint, then click on the lightbulb button at the top right of the puzzle panel, and it will show you one letter in the correct position. Multiple clicks will add a letter at a time.

WINNING THE GAME

In flexible and serial game mode, you win by solving all the words before the number of guesses drops to zero. In timed game mode, you "win" by seeing how many words you solve in five minutes. See if you can beat your prior personal best!

TIPS and TRICKS

• DEL key on the left or the right?: Some word games have the DEL key on the left of the keyboard, and ENTER on the right. Other word games do the opposite. In this game, the default is to have the DEL key on the left, but you can click on the "settings" menu button to swap the DEL and ENTER keys.
• Auto Solve: In some cases, you may find that a word is solved without you guessing it. The reason is that you got lucky! Lets say the word was "RADIO". Imagine a situation where, over a series of guesses, you guessed an "R" in cell one, and an "A" in cell two. Then letters "D" and "O" were inherited from other words, and finally you guessed an "I" in cell four. Now all letters have been found, so the puzzle is considered solved. Take it as a win!
• Mouse Scroll Settings On a PC, users will use the mouse scroll wheel to control the scrolling of the detailed status. However, the direction of scroll and the amount of scroll per "click" varies widely across different machines and mice. Use the the "settings" menu button to select 1) your preferred scroll direction (e.g does a forward "click" of the mouse move the detailed status up or down?) and 2) how fast the status moves. The default is set to 100. You can go as low as 1 (slowest) to 999 (fastest).