Summary: Word Fill puzzles are made in Puzzle Maker Pro by choosing a grid size, a symmetry, a difficulty and how many starter words to reveal — the module builds the interlocking grid, fills every slot from the built-in English dictionary, and renders the puzzle page with its matching solution page. This guide walks through your first one, shaping the board, styling it, placing the puzzle’s own word list on the page, titling it, setting the quantity, and exporting print-ready and web-ready files.
Overview
A Word Fill is a crossword with the clues replaced by the word list. Puzzle Maker Pro does the hard part: it builds a black-square grid, fills every slot with a real word, reveals a starter, and prints the list grouped by length under the grid on the image, beside the grid on the book page, or both. You choose the size, the shape, the symmetry, the difficulty, how much help the solver gets and where that list sits — the combination is what makes your series yours. New to the puzzle itself? Read How Word Fill Puzzles Work first.
Required Modules
Puzzle Maker Pro – Word Fill. What each edition makes:
- Word Fill (the Standard tier) builds puzzles from the built-in English dictionary at every size, shape, symmetry and difficulty, styles them, exports JPG, PNG, SVG and PDF, and includes Instant Puzzle Books and Puzzle Book Studio Creative: full book editing of one collection, so you set the interior’s fonts, page numbers and page layout and rebuild the book as often as you like without re-running a puzzle.
- Word Fill Productivity adds Time Saver for batch runs, Puzzle Book Studio Productivity for books built from several collections, and JSON export.
- Word Fill + Interactive and Word Fill Productivity + Interactive add online play: the exported HTML and the ZIP for the free Puzzle Maker Pro Online WordPress plugin.
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: Word 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. Word Fill Productivity includes that, plus selling or supplying the generated puzzles to other publishers and sellers. Both editions make the same puzzles and carry the same permission to sell; they differ in whether you can batch and build mixed books.
A free demo is available, so you can make a Word Fill before you buy: try the free demo. Demo output is one watermarked puzzle at a time.
Preparation
Nothing to install. Open Puzzle Maker Pro, choose Word Fill in the Select a puzzle gallery, and the Creator opens on its Main tab. The built-in English dictionary downloads once on first use and is cached on your PC after that, so every grid fills itself.
A 13 × 13 grid on Regular with 1 starter word is a good first puzzle — the Creator opens at Grid width 5, so set the size first. Every puzzle is generated together with its matching solution page.
Choose the Grid Size and Shape
On the Main tab, set Grid width — 5 to 17. 13 is the size most published Word Fills use, so type it in. Then leave Grid height (0 = square) at 0 for a square grid, or set it to 5–17 for a rectangle (say 11 wide and 15 tall for a portrait page).
A 9 × 9 is a warm-up with around thirty words; a 13 × 13 carries around sixty; a 17 × 17 is a long sit. The word list grows with the grid, and the book builders print it beside the grid, so a 17 × 17 wants a trim size with room for a long list — Lay Out the Page and Set the Title, below, covers the on-image option.
Symmetry shapes the black squares: Rotational180 (the default, the classic crossword look), None for a free-form pattern, MirrorHorizontal or MirrorVertical for a reflected one, and Rotational90 or Diagonal on square grids. Rotational90 and Diagonal apply to square boards, so for a shaped rectangle pick None or one of the mirrors.
Pick the Difficulty and the Starter
- Difficulty — Easy or Regular (default Regular). Easy draws only common words, which is what makes a children’s title or a large-print book land instead of stall. Regular uses the full vocabulary with common words preferred, and at 13 × 13 and 15 × 15 it uses grids with longer entries. Both draw on the same built-in dictionary, which is screened for offensive terms, so a title for young readers is safe to print.
- Starter hints — 0 to 20, default 1: how many whole words are written into the grid before the solver begins. Each starter is a complete word, printed in its cells and still listed, so the solver can tick it off. One starter suits a puzzle-a-day book; two or three make a friendlier opening for a large-print or school-market title; zero is for solvers who like a cold start.
Set the Quantity
Quantity, in the bar above the tabs, runs the same settings that many times. Every puzzle gets its own fill and its own starter, so no two puzzles in a batch are the same; at the standard square sizes the black-square patterns come from a library of around 20 to 25 shapes, so plan on shapes recurring across a long book. Before a print run, step through five or six with Next Preview and check each one: the list fits its band, no word is broken across lines, every length group has its heading, and the starter reads clearly. When a book needs a mix of sizes or difficulties, use Time Saver (Word Fill Productivity) instead — see Generate and Export, below.
Style It
On the Style tab, set the Entries font, the Canvas and Cell fill colours, the Cell border, and the Block colour that paints the black squares. Styling is on every edition, and the controls work the same way on every module — see How to Customize Puzzle Designs in Puzzle Maker Pro.
Lay Out the Page and Set the Title
The Layout tab holds the two controls that shape a Word Fill page, plus the usual Crop and Use branding options (both off by default).
Word list on image. By default the word list is printed Below the grid in 3 columns, so the puzzle image is solvable on its own — the loose-image option for worksheets and web posts. Choose Above, Left or Right to move the band, and set Word list columns (1–6, or 0 for the automatic three-column layout). Fewer columns make each column longer, which gives the band more of the page and leaves the grid smaller; more columns keep the grid larger. Choose None if you only want the list on the book page — Instant Puzzle Books and Puzzle Book Studio receive it either way and print it beside the grid.
Smart Titles. Smart Titles work the same way on every module — see How to Create Smart Puzzle Titles in Puzzle Maker Pro for the mechanism. Word Fill offers these options:
- Custom — your own text, e.g. “Puzzle 24”
- Word Fill — e.g. “Word Fill” (the default)
- Legpuzzel — e.g. “Legpuzzel”, the Dutch name for the puzzle, for a Dutch-titled page (the entries themselves stay English)
The same option set feeds the Description line under the title, which defaults to “Fit every word into the interlocking grid.”
Generate and Export
In the Preview group, click Refresh to draw one puzzle and Next Preview to step through more. Tick the output formats you want, set the destination with Select Folder, then click Create to run the whole quantity. Every Word Fill comes out as a pair: the puzzle page, with the starter word written in, and the solution page with every cell filled. Paid editions export JPG, PNG, SVG and PDF.
- Instant Puzzle Books (every edition) builds the interior straight from your current book settings — page size, margins, titles, page numbers, the word list beside each grid and the answer section — as a PDF or a PowerPoint deck.
- Puzzle Book Studio on Word Fill gives you full book editing for this one collection; on Word Fill Productivity it combines several collections into one book.
- Time Saver on Word Fill Productivity runs several rows in one go, each row with its own size, difficulty and quantity — the fastest way to build a graded book. Rows can sit alongside other modules in the same sheet.
- JSON export on Word Fill Productivity writes the puzzle data files for your own apps and workflows.
- Online play comes with Word Fill + Interactive and Word Fill Productivity + Interactive: the exported HTML plus a ZIP for the free Puzzle Maker Pro Online WordPress plugin, so the same puzzles play on your own pages.
Outcome
You have a Word Fill run: a puzzle page and its matching solution page for every puzzle, with the puzzle’s word list printed on the image, on the book page, or both, titled the way your book titles them, in the formats you export. From here, Instant Puzzle Books turns the pairs into an interior, Puzzle Book Studio (on every edition) gives you full control of the interior for that collection, and on Word Fill Productivity Time Saver builds a graded book — 9 × 9 Easy openers, 13 × 13 Regular middles, 15 × 15 closers — in one run.
FAQ
Which edition do I need to batch-create?
Word Fill Productivity. It adds Time Saver, which runs several rows — each with its own grid size, difficulty and quantity — in a single pass, and Puzzle Book Studio Productivity to combine those sets into one book.
How many words are in one puzzle?
The board decides. A 9 × 9 comes out around thirty words, a 13 × 13 around sixty, and every one of them is printed in the list — so a bigger board is a longer list as well as a longer solve. Pick the size by how long you want the reader sitting there.
Do I get an answer key?
Yes. Every puzzle is generated with a matching solution page as a separate image, with every cell filled in. It works as the teacher copy of a worksheet or as the solutions section at the back of a book.
What formats can I export?
JPG, PNG, SVG and PDF on the paid editions, each puzzle with its solution page. Instant Puzzle Books writes the assembled book as a PDF or a PowerPoint deck. Demo output is one watermarked puzzle at a time.
Do I need an internet connection?
Only for the built-in dictionary on first use — it downloads once and is cached on your PC. After that you create offline.