Which crossword variation

Open three of your own crossword listings the way a shopper does. Thumbnail first, then the first sample page. If all three open on a grid of empty boxes with numbers in the corners, you have published one product three times and split your own reviews between them.

Puzzle Maker Pro’s Crossword Variations menu is one Creator with a Type dropdown, and three of those Types are the looks a shopper can tell apart at thumbnail size: words that lock Across and Down, the same crossing with a blank strip to write a secret answer on, and words laid end-to-end along a sparse coil that never crosses itself. The same word list feeds all three. The page a buyer sees is completely different, and so is the amount of writing you have to do.

The word list is not the decision

Say you have 250 winter words with clues half-written. That list is not a product. It is raw material for any of the three, and every one of them will use it differently.

• The intersecting grid eats a pool. It fits as many words as it can and throws the rest away.
• The secret version eats a filtered pool — only words that share letters with the secret survive.
• The spiral eats letters, not words. You tell it roughly how many letters the coil should hold and it takes words until the budget is full.

So the same 250 words are three different page counts, three different production costs, and three different promises on the cover. Pick the promise first.

Regular Criss Cross — words lock, and somebody writes the clues

Regular Criss Cross is the conventional page. Words cross at shared letters. Both an Across list and a Down list print. Letter cells are empty on the puzzle image and filled on the solution. Word numbers sit small in the corner of the first letter’s square by default, or you can give each number a full square of its own — which eats grid space and changes what the generator can fit.

Two things about it decide your week, not your taste.

The clue bill. In the mode it opens in, every word needs a clue. Across a hundred-puzzle book that is the whole production cost. Three ways out, and you pick one before you start rather than at puzzle sixty: switch on the built-in US English dictionary and let it fill every word it knows; draft clues with the AI Word Assistant and edit the wording afterwards; or set Clue Style to Word Fill, which replaces clues with a word bank grouped by length under headings like “5 Letters” and asks the solver to work out which word fits where. Word Fill is a real second look off the same grid — a fill-in book with no writing in it — not a crossword with the clues left off.

The grid does not promise your whole list. Placement makes up to five attempts, keeps the densest one, and drops the words it could not fit. A fruit list does not guarantee a page with every fruit on it. Feed it more words than you need and let it choose.

One setting will bite a worksheet seller. Clue List Output defaults to Classic, which hands the Across and Down list to the book layer instead of drawing it on the puzzle image. For a standalone one-page file, switch it to In Image, or you will export a numbered grid with no clues anywhere on it.

Secret Word Criss Cross — the same crossing, plus something to write on the line

Secret Word Criss Cross is a genuine intersecting crossword. Words cross. Across and Down both print. What it adds is a blank strip under the grid: certain letters inside the solved crossword are numbered, and those letters copy down onto the strip to spell a word or a short phrase. The puzzle page shows an empty strip. The solution shows it filled.

That strip is the listing. A winter crossword that only fills boxes looks like every other sample in the category. A winter crossword whose first page still has WINTER left to write on the line is a second puzzle sitting inside the first one, and it photographs as a different product.

Four mechanics worth knowing before you commit a series to it:

• The secret comes from your list. Tag it in the word list, or let the Creator pick a random word from the pool. If you tell it to use a tagged secret and there is no tag in the file, generation stops rather than guessing.
• A secret costs you words. Only words sharing at least a set number of letters with the secret (two, by default) are eligible, so a long secret over a thin list gives you a sparser grid than the same list without one. The Creator warns about this; believe it and bring more words.
• A phrase is allowed, and the strip wraps onto up to three lines.
• Secret or letter hints, never both. The other mode drops the strip and numbers letters in the grid instead. And the secret is optional: switch it off and this Type prints a plain crossing.

Two honest limits. Word numbers on this Type always take a full square, so the grid looks chunkier than a Regular Criss Cross of the same word count — plan the trim for that, don’t discover it in the proof. And the word-list Verify button does not check that your secret is coverable by your list; that check belongs to a sibling Type. The generator is the only real test, so run one page before you commit the theme.

If this is the look you are building a shelf around, the publisher and book-length case is already made on Secret Word Criss Cross for publishers and Secret Word Criss Cross puzzle books.

Word Spiral — one path, and nothing crosses

Word Spiral stops looking like a crossword the moment the sample opens, which is exactly why it sells to a different shopper. Words sit end-to-end along a sparse coil. They do not share letters. There is no Down list — one clue list, in path order. Letters are hidden on the puzzle image and drawn on the solution.

The rule is one sentence: start at the first marker, walk the path, and take the words in the order the numbers give you. No two words share a letter, so nothing constrains the list — every accepted word goes down whole.

Where the word number sits is the detail that sentence hides. Small and in the corner of the word’s first letter cell is the default, and on that setting one word really does end in the cell immediately before the next one starts. Give each number a full square instead and that square is a cell on the coil in its own right, sitting between the end of one word and the start of the next — the letters still never touch, but the track runs one cell longer per word, so the same list draws a bigger spiral.

The clue bill is a choice here too, and the same three Clue Styles the intersecting grid has all work on the coil. Regular is one written clue per word, numbered in path order. Word Fill drops the clues for a word bank grouped by length — and on this Type it also stops the small corner numbers printing on the puzzle image, so if you want the word breaks visible, pair Word Fill with the full-square numbers. Scramble prints each numbered answer with its letters jumbled, which is a third page off the same coil and no writing either.

Size it by letters. Total Letters runs from 50 to 250 and ships at 100; the generator fills to roughly that budget and stops. Word-count settings from the shared Creator do nothing here, and neither do the grid Rows and Cols — the coil sizes itself. A page is one continuous track, so a small letter budget is a quick worksheet and a large one is a full-page sit.

The looks worth testing before you settle a series: a real spiral or a squared-off spiral, square cells or circles, words sorted long-to-short so the long ones ride the outside, and a compact round layout or a stretched rectangular one when the image has to fill a wide slot. Pick one combination and keep it for the whole book — a coil that changes shape every page reads as an accident, not variety.

There is no secret strip here and no letter hints. Checking those boxes on this Type changes nothing.

What page one has to prove

Four places to sell these, and the same three looks land differently on each. If the channel itself is still open, interiors, printables, worksheets and embeddable puzzles sorts that out first.

• KDP. Look Inside is your sample. Page one must be the look on the cover, at print size, with the numbers legible after Amazon’s compression. A criss-cross whose crossings are thin and barely connected reads as a placeholder even when the puzzle is fine. Put keys where the reader expects them; puzzle book answer keys covers placement.
• Etsy. The thumbnail is the contract. A spiral thumbnail with a criss-cross in file four is the mismatch a buyer writes a review about. One look per pack, key files included, and a preview image that shows the empty page rather than the solved one.
• TPT. One page, one key, and the clue list actually on the sheet — this is where Clue List Output set to In Image matters. Word Fill is the classroom-friendly setting on either look, the grid or the coil: no clue writing, and the word bank does the differentiating.
• Website and embeds. These three Types export images — JPG, PNG, transparent PNG, SVG — and feed the book builder. What they do not do today is hand you a data file or a playable board, so sell them as print and download. Puzzle Maker Pro does both of those things elsewhere: the Customer JSON data file comes with Productivity, and browser play is the Interactive add-on on the modules that have one. Neither is on this shelf.

Keep the mix honest inside a book, too. A deliberately mixed volume works when the cover says so. A criss-cross book that turns into spirals on page twelve is a refund.

If the secret is the point, three more Types do it differently

The same menu holds three other live Types, and they are not variations on this pick — different engines, different first pages. Secret Word Column puts one word per row and always hides a secret. Secret Word Grid packs several words into each row of a block. Secret Word Spiral is the coil carrying a secret. If the secret is the product rather than a bonus, start there instead.

For scale rather than shape: the Creator’s Quantity makes many puzzles from one list in a run, and the family Time Saver add-on is the one that takes a folder of word lists and a row per book. Themed lists are the reusable asset across all six Types — word lists for puzzle books is that job.

What done looks like

• The thumbnail and page one show the same look, and the listing name says which one it is.
• A criss-cross sample crosses properly and densely; a spiral sample is one unbroken path.
• A secret-word sample shows the strip empty on the puzzle page and filled on the solution.
• The key matches the look: filled letters for a crossing, filled letters in path order for a coil, strip included for a secret.
• If you chose Word Fill, the sample shows the length-grouped word bank, so nobody buys expecting clues.
• On a one-page worksheet, the clue list is on the image.
• Every page in the volume is the same Type. Variety belongs on the cover, not as a surprise.

The whole point

Pick by the first page a stranger sees. Crossing boxes with an Across and Down list is Regular Criss Cross. The same crossing with a strip left blank under it is Secret Word Criss Cross. One numbered path whose words never lock is Word Spiral. One look, one listing, one promise.

Still deciding between a grid and a one-word page? Criss Cross against Word Star is the next comparison along, and which puzzle type fits your audience is the step before this one.

Every paid Puzzle Maker Pro edition licenses you to sell the finished books, packs and worksheets you make to your own readers and customers. Productivity adds the right to sell or supply the puzzles you generate to other publishers, businesses and sellers, and it carries the family Time Saver. The editions page has the current line-up.

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