How to Create Block Fill Puzzles in Puzzle Maker Pro

Summary: Block Fill puzzles are created in Puzzle Maker Pro by choosing the block size, how many blocks make the grid, and a few anchor letters, then generating the puzzle with its matching solution. This guide walks through making your first one, setting its difficulty, titling it, and exporting print-ready and web-ready output.

Overview

A Block Fill puzzle is a filled crossword sliced into square blocks that the solver reassembles onto an empty grid. Puzzle Maker Pro does the hard part: it fills a crossword, cuts it into blocks, checks that every block is unique, scatters the anchor letters across the pieces, and renders the page plus its solution. This tutorial covers making one, from opening the module to exporting. New to the puzzle itself? Read How Block Fill Puzzles Work first.

Required Modules

Puzzle Maker Pro – Block Fill. Its number sibling, Number Block Fill, reassembles digit blocks instead and is sold separately. What each edition makes:

Block Fill (the Standard tier) builds puzzles from the built-in dictionary at every block size and grid, exports JPG, PNG, SVG and PDF, and includes Instant Puzzle Books. The Style tab is yours: the entry font, the cell borders and the colour of the black blocks, set once and carried across a whole shelf of books. It also includes Puzzle Slides (a PowerPoint with a movable tile for every block, for running a puzzle live on a screen) and Puzzle Book Studio Creative, which gives you every book feature — fonts, titles, page numbers, layout, margins and trim size — on one collection.
Block Fill Productivity adds Time Saver for batch runs, Puzzle Book Studio Productivity for books built from several collections, and JSON export.
Block Fill + Interactive and Block Fill Productivity + Interactive add online play: the exported HTML and the ZIP for the free Puzzle Maker Pro Online WordPress plugin, where solvers drag the blocks into place.

You can move up to Productivity after you buy, and add Interactive on top of either edition — so start with the one that fits what you are making today. See Puzzle Maker Pro Editions Explained.

Commercial rights: Block Fill lets you sell the finished books, worksheets and packs you make to your own readers and customers, including KDP, Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Block Fill Productivity includes that, plus selling or supplying the generated puzzles to other publishers and sellers. The editions differ in how fast you can produce, not in permission to sell.

A free demo is available, so you can make a Block Fill before you buy: try the free demo. Demo output is a watermarked image.

Preparation

Nothing to install. Open Puzzle Maker Pro, choose Block Fill in the Select a puzzle gallery, and the Creator opens on its Main tab. The built-in dictionary is fetched and cached on first use, so every crossword fills itself. A 4 across × 5 down grid of 3×3 blocks (a 12 × 15 board) with six anchor letters is the default, and a comfortable place to start. Every puzzle is generated together with its matching solution.

Choose the Block Shape

On the Main tab, set the shape of the grid:

Block size — the cells per block edge, 2 to 5 (default 3). 3×3 is the classic look.
Blocks across and Blocks down — how many blocks make the grid, each 2 to 10 (default 4 × 5). The grid ends up Blocks across × Block size wide and Blocks down × Block size tall, and each side must land between 5 and 21 cells — so if block size × block count would exceed 21, lower one of them, and if it would dip under 5 (two 2-cell blocks), raise one. The default is a 12 × 15 grid of twenty 3×3 blocks.

Set the Hints and Decoys

Still on the Main tab:

Anchor hints — how many letters are pre-printed on the grid, 0 to 40 (default 6). More hints make an easier puzzle; they are spread across different blocks automatically, so the solver gets a foothold in several regions.
Decoy blocks — optional extra blocks that belong nowhere, 0 to 20 (default 0). Add a few to make the bank harder to sort. Each decoy borrows a real block’s shape with scrambled letters, and no two blocks in the bank are ever identical.

Set the Difficulty

The last control on the Main tab is Difficulty, Easy or Regular (default Regular), and it decides which words the fill reaches for.

Easy keeps to the most common words. It is the band to pick when your reader’s vocabulary is the constraint: children’s titles, word-work packs, ESL practice.
Regular draws on the full dictionary while still preferring common words, so a less familiar entry turns up only where the interlock demands it. It is the general trade puzzle book.

When you preview below, read the solution grid rather than the puzzle: the solution is the page your reader finishes on, and it tells you straight away whether the band suits the book.

Set the Quantity

Quantity, in the bar above the tabs, makes several puzzles at the same settings in one run — the free demo and any preview show just one. Set it to 60 and you have a one-size book on any edition, ready for Instant Puzzle Books. When a book needs a mix of block sizes or difficulties — easing readers in over the opening pages, say — that is what Time Saver (Block Fill Productivity) is for; see Export Your Puzzles, below.

Style It

Every edition renders the standard black-and-white page, which is what a print interior wants anyway. The Style tab is yours on every edition: the Entries font, the Canvas and Cell fill colours, the Cell border, and the Block colour that paints the black squares — the same style controls shared across every module. See How to Customize Puzzle Designs in Puzzle Maker Pro.

Set the Title

On the Layout tab, choose a Smart Title. Block Fill offers:

Custom — your own title text, used exactly as typed. This is where the control opens, pre-filled with “Block Fill”, so typing over it is all a custom title takes
Block Fill — the product name, stamped on every puzzle in the run

The same two options are available for the puzzle Description, which also opens on Custom, pre-filled with “Reassemble the blocks into the interlocking crossword grid.”. The Layout tab also holds the crop setting and the per-collection branding toggle. Smart Titles work the same way in every module — see How to Create Smart Puzzle Titles in Puzzle Maker Pro.

Export Your Puzzles

Use Next Preview in the Preview group to draw a puzzle and step through more of them, pick your output formats and destination folder, then click Create to run the whole quantity. Every Block Fill comes out as a pair: the puzzle page — the empty grid with its anchors and the printed block bank — and the solution page with every cell filled.

Print / PDF — PNG, JPG, SVG and PDF of the puzzle and solution, on every edition.
Instant Puzzle Books (every edition) builds the interior straight from your current book settings — page size, margins, titles and page numbers. Switch on the three things a print interior wants and it carries those too: a title page, a table of contents, and cross-reference footers that send the solver from puzzle 12 to its solution on page 87 and back. Export it as a PDF or a PowerPoint deck.
Puzzle Book Studio on Block Fill gives you full book editing for this one collection; on Block Fill Productivity it combines several collections into one book.
Puzzle Slides — an interactive PowerPoint with a movable tile for each block, on every edition.
JSON export — the puzzle data files for your own apps and workflows, on Block Fill Productivity.
Online play — the exported HTML plus a ZIP for the free Puzzle Maker Pro Online WordPress plugin, so solvers drag the blocks into place in a browser; with Block Fill + Interactive or Block Fill Productivity + Interactive. See How to Play Puzzles Online.
Time Saver — on Block Fill Productivity, batch-create rows of different sizes and difficulties in one run, then assemble the pages into a finished book in Puzzle Book Studio.

Outcome

You can now create Block Fill puzzles end to end — any block size from 2 to 5, on a grid that runs from 5 to 21 cells a side, with your own hint count, decoys and difficulty band, titled, styled, and exported for print or the web — one puzzle or a whole batch assembled into a book.

FAQ

Which edition do I need to batch-create a whole book?
Block Fill Productivity — it adds Time Saver for batch creation across mixed sizes and difficulties, and Puzzle Book Studio Productivity to combine those sets into one book.

Where do the words come from?
From the built-in dictionary, on every edition. Puzzle Maker Pro fills the whole crossword for you, so a page takes a click rather than a word hunt. Easy keeps to the most common words and Regular opens up the full vocabulary, and every grid still interlocks across and down.

What sizes can I make?
Block size 2 to 5, with 2 to 10 blocks across and down, as long as the grid stays between 5 and 21 cells on each side. The default is a 12 × 15 grid of 3×3 blocks.

Which edition unlocks online play and Puzzle Slides?
Puzzle Slides comes with every edition. Online play comes with the Interactive editions — Block Fill + Interactive or Block Fill Productivity + Interactive. JSON export is Block Fill Productivity, as is Time Saver.

How do I make it harder?
Turn up the number of blocks, add decoy blocks, and lower the anchor-hint count. Regular difficulty draws on a wider vocabulary than Easy.