The Word Puzzle Nobody Puts Down Because Nobody Gets Stuck
Every clued crossword book has the same problem. The solver hits a clue they do not know, and the page stops being fun. They put it down. They do not buy the next one.
A Word Fill has no clues to get stuck on. You hand the solver the grid and the complete word list, grouped by length, and the whole puzzle becomes a fitting problem. A dozen and a half three letter words. A couple of dozen four letter ones. And two nine letter words with almost nowhere else to go, so once they land the page starts falling open. Nobody needs trivia. Nobody needs to look anything up. Everybody finishes.
That is what makes it such a reliable book to sell. Type your grid size, set how many puzzles you want, and a sixty puzzle interior comes out of one run: every puzzle image with its matching solution image, ready for the book, the worksheet pack, or the listing.
Demo files are watermarked. Paid files are watermark free. Try the free demo.
A Fill In Book Sells to the People Crosswords Lose
You already know the crossword buyer. Word Fill reaches the ones who bounced off it.
Solvers know this puzzle from magazines, where it goes by Fill In, Criss Cross, or Word Fit, so you are not teaching a new format on the cover. What you are selling is the version of the word book that finishes: the answer is always on the page, so a beginner, a learner working in English, or someone solving at the kitchen table on a Tuesday night all get to the last square.
That is the reader who finishes one book and goes looking for the next, and that reader is the only thing a series ever gets built on.
Your Sample Page Has to Look Like the Real Thing
Hold your sample page next to the puzzle magazine at the supermarket checkout. A buyer decides in about half a second whether yours is the same kind of thing.
Word Fill builds a dense, magazine-style grid, and the rule behind it is absolute. Every white cell belongs to an across entry and a down entry. Every entry is a distinct dictionary word. Nothing shorter than three letters goes in anywhere. Three quarters of every board carries letters, and on a 13 by 13 it runs closer to four fifths, around 130 of the 169 squares. On a looser grid the black squares end up doing the work the words should be doing, and the page goes thin at thumbnail size.
The solver feels it immediately. Every letter is doing two jobs at once, so each word placed hands free letters to every word crossing it, and the solve speeds up all the way to the last square.
You feel it on the shelf. A reader flipping your sample page sees the newspaper-style grid they already recognise, with the clues swapped out for the answer list, not a handful of words floating in white space.
Set the Size, Set the Shape, Print the Page
Your trim size should decide the puzzle, not the other way round. Set Grid width to 13 and you have the board every magazine solver already recognises: about 60 interlocking entries, a list climbing from a dozen or more three letter words up to a pair of nine letter ones on Regular. Drop to 9 by 9 for a warm up sheet of roughly thirty short entries. Go to 17 by 17 when the book wants a long sit.
Set Grid height and the board turns rectangular, which is how you fill a tall trim size without shrinking the print. Eleven wide by fifteen tall gives you around 130 letter squares and close to 60 entries in a shape that drops straight into a 6 by 9 interior.
Symmetry is what makes a page look printed rather than generated. Rotational 180 gives you the newsstand look buyers trust. The mirrors give you a symmetrical pattern that reads as calm rather than busy. Rotational 90 or Diagonal, on a square board, turn the black squares themselves into the design. Or pick None and stop thinking about the pattern at all.
Starter hints decide how fast the page opens. One whole word revealed is the default, and it is usually enough of a toehold. Turn it up toward twenty for a beginner set or a children’s book, down to zero when the solver should work for it. The revealed cells print tinted and the word stays in the list, so nothing is taken away from the solver, only handed to them.
Easy Keeps It Common. Regular Opens It Up.
A nine year old and a retired crossword veteran will not finish the same book. Easy fills from common words only, so every word on the list is one your solver already owns, which is what makes a children’s title, a large print book or a learner’s workbook land instead of stall. The built in dictionary is screened for offensive terms, so a title for young readers is safe to print unread.
Turn it to Regular and the vocabulary opens up, common words still preferred, and at 13 by 13 and 15 by 15 the board opens up and carries longer entries. Set 13 by 13 on Regular and the board puts two nine letter words in. Longer entries mean more letters riding on each placement, and a solve your reader sits down for instead of finishing in a waiting room.
Nobody Else’s Book Has Yours
Run 30 and you get 30 puzzles: 30 fills, 30 starter words, 30 lists, none of them repeated. Run it again tomorrow on the same settings and you get 30 more. That is the whole difference between a generator and the bulk fill in content everybody else is reselling, and it is why the title stays yours.
Print the Word List on the Image, or on the Book Page
One run, two products. Out of the box the puzzle’s own word list prints on the image itself, three columns under the grid, so a loose puzzle stands on its own for a worksheet, a blog post, or a product listing. That block of words moves to the right, the left or above; six columns keeps a long list tight under a worksheet board, three sits comfortably under most, and the block grows to whatever the list needs so the words stay big enough to read.
Take the list off the image, and Instant Puzzle Books sets it beside the grid on the page, big and legible, exactly where a reader’s eye goes. Either way the list travels with the puzzle.
One setting, and the same run ships as a book interior or as a standalone image.
From One Puzzle to a Whole Fill In Book
Every edition builds ready to print puzzle books with Instant Puzzle Books: it takes the puzzles you just made and the book settings you already use, and writes the interior, complete with a title page, a table of contents, and a footer on every puzzle that tells your reader exactly which page its solution is on. PDF or PowerPoint, from the trim and margins you already publish in.
Every edition also includes Puzzle Book Studio Creative, and the thing it really buys you is the second title. Instant Puzzle Books writes one book from your current settings. Puzzle Book Studio opens that book up: change the fonts, move the page numbers, reset the page layout, and rebuild the whole interior as often as you like without generating a single new puzzle. One set of 120 Word Fills becomes a large print edition, a beginner edition and a boxed bundle, each laid out its own way, and they come out looking like a series because they are.
Word Fill Productivity adds Time Saver. One batch, several rows, each with its own size, symmetry, difficulty, and quantity, all produced in one pass. Full Puzzle Book Studio then assembles those separate sets into one spine, so the book can climb from 9 by 9 warm ups to 17 by 17 long sits instead of running one setup front to back. That is the difference between making puzzles and producing a catalog.
Output Formats and Publishing Options
| Word Fill | Productivity | |
|---|---|---|
| Dense magazine-style grids: every letter in an across word and a down word, nothing under three letters | ✓ | ✓ |
| Grids from 5 by 5 to 17 by 17, square or rectangular, six symmetry modes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Easy and Regular, starter hints from 0 to 20 whole words | ✓ | ✓ |
| Export as JPG, PNG, SVG and PDF, puzzle and matching solution | ✓ | ✓ |
| Instant Puzzle Books, with title page, contents and solution cross references | ✓ | ✓ |
| Style control over the entry font, canvas, cell fill, cell borders and the black squares | ✓ | ✓ |
| Puzzle Book Studio Creative: set the book’s own fonts, page numbers and page layout | ✓ | ✓ |
| Rebuild the interior as often as you like without generating a new puzzle | ✓ | ✓ |
| Turn one puzzle set into several titles that look like a series | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time Saver, batch several complete sets in one pass | ✓ | |
| Puzzle Book Studio Productivity, mixed books from several collections | ✓ | |
| JSON export for your own apps and workflows | ✓ | |
| Sell the finished books, worksheets and packs you make to your own readers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sell or supply the generated puzzles to other publishers and sellers | ✓ | |
| Playable web games on your own site (the + Interactive add-on, bought on top of either edition) | add-on | add-on |
Let Your Readers Solve One on Your Own Site
Here is the move that turns a Word Fill set into a mailing list.
On Word Fill + Interactive or Word Fill Productivity + Interactive, you publish a set to your own website through the free Puzzle Maker Pro Online WordPress plugin, and visitors solve it in the browser. They click a square and type, or drag a word out of the bank onto a slot of the right length, and hit Check when they think it is done.
Publish it as a puzzle list and visitors pick from a dropdown and solve whichever one they like. Publish it as a leveled game and the same set becomes a path: levels unlock in order, progress and stars save in the visitor’s browser, and when they finish the last one the completion screen shows your message and your button. Put three free puzzles up, and the reader who finishes them lands on “get the full book” at exactly the moment they want more.
For a teacher or a course, rename the caption from Level to Lesson and the same set is self paced practice a student works through in order.
A page of playable Word Fills gives visitors a reason to stay and a reason to come back, and the finished ones point straight at the book you are selling. Play a Word Fill in your browser: .
Which Edition Should You Choose?
Word Fill is where most publishers start, and it will carry a whole series of titles. Whatever trim size you publish in and whatever level your solver reads at, the puzzles and the finished interior both come out of it, and you can sell everything you make. The moment you plan a second title, Puzzle Book Studio rebuilds the same puzzle set into a new book, with its own fonts, page numbers and page layout, without generating a single new puzzle. One run, several books.
Word Fill Productivity is the one when you are producing rather than making. Time Saver runs several setups in one batch, full Puzzle Book Studio builds them into one book, JSON export feeds your own workflows, and you may supply the puzzles you generate to other publishers and sellers.
Interactive rides on either edition: pick one, then add it, and the same puzzles play on your site.
You can move up to Productivity after you buy, or add Interactive on top of either edition, so pick the one that fits the title in front of you today. Choose your edition at the top of this page, or make a puzzle first with the free demo.
Who This Is For
Puzzle book publishers who want a word title that is not another word search and not another crossword, and who want the interior built rather than assembled by hand.
Teachers and tutors who need a word sheet every student can finish: Easy when the whole class has to get through it, Regular when they should have to work, an answer key on every sheet, and a board size that fits the period.
Sellers of printables and worksheet packs who want a format that reads instantly on a listing thumbnail and that buyers can finish without a clue key.
Site owners and course creators who want puzzles their audience plays on the page instead of downloading, with a completion screen that points at the product.
If you have been buying fill in content in bulk and hoping nobody else bought the same file, this is the change: every run is generated fresh for you, at your trim size, with your symmetry and your fonts, and your name on the cover.
Try It Before You Buy
Download the free demo and make a Word Fill before you spend anything. Demo files are watermarked and the run is a single puzzle, but the grid, the list, the starter word and the solution are the real output.
Try the free demo, then pick the edition that fits above.
Licensing and Commercial Use
Word Fill lets you sell the finished books, worksheets, and packs you make to your own readers and customers, on KDP, Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own store. One time commercial use licence. Watermark free.
Word Fill Productivity includes that, plus you may sell or supply the generated puzzles to other publishers and sellers.
Both editions carry the same permission to sell. What changes as you move up is how much you can produce at once.
Product Details
| Product | Puzzle Maker Pro – Word Fill |
| Editions | Word Fill; Word Fill + Interactive; Word Fill Productivity; Word Fill Productivity + Interactive |
| Platform | Windows desktop |
| Puzzle rule | An interlocking crossword grid with no clues, published with the complete word list grouped by length. Every entry is a distinct word of three letters or more, and one whole word is revealed as a starter. |
| Grid density | Dense, magazine style. Every white cell is in an across entry and a down entry, so there are no unchecked cells and no two letter filler. Three quarters of the board or more carries letters, around 130 of 169 on a 13 by 13. |
| Grid | Width 5 to 17; height square or 5 to 17 for a rectangle. Six symmetry modes; Rotational 90 and Diagonal on square boards. |
| Difficulty | Easy, common words only. Regular, the full vocabulary with common words preferred, and longer entries on the larger boards. |
| Starter hints | 0 to 20 whole words revealed, tinted on the grid and still listed. |
| Word list | Every entry in the grid is printed for the solver, grouped by length, from the built in English dictionary. |
| Word list placement | On the puzzle image by default, below the grid in three columns; or above, left, right, or off the image entirely, in 1 to 6 columns or automatic. It prints on the book page beside the grid either way. |
| Quantity | Set per run; Time Saver on Productivity batches several setups at once |
| Output formats | JPG, PNG, SVG, PDF: puzzle image and matching solution image. Demo output is a watermarked image. |
| Solution pages | Yes. Every puzzle has a matching solution image with every cell filled. |
| Puzzle books | Instant Puzzle Books on every edition. Puzzle Book Studio on Word Fill (one collection) and Productivity (several collections in one book). Title page, contents and solution cross references on every edition. |
| Web play | Publish sets to your own site as a puzzle list or a leveled game, on Word Fill + Interactive or Productivity + Interactive |
| JSON export | Word Fill Productivity |
| Time Saver | Word Fill Productivity |
| Internet required | Once, to download the built in dictionary, which is then cached. After that you create offline. |
| Commercial licence | Sell the finished books, worksheets and packs you make to your own readers and customers. Productivity adds selling or supplying the generated puzzles to other publishers and sellers. |
| Upgrades | You can move up to any higher edition later |
| Free demo | Yes |
| Delivery | Immediate, in your member area |
Questions Before You Buy
Is there a free demo?
Yes. The free Puzzle Maker Pro demo makes a Word Fill so you can see the grid, the list and the solution before you buy. Demo output is watermarked and limited to one puzzle per run. Paid files are watermark free.
Can I upgrade later?
Yes. You can move up to Productivity after you buy, and you can add Interactive on top of either edition. Start with the edition that fits the book you are making today.
What exactly is a Word Fill?
It is a crossword grid with no clues. You print the grid and the complete list of words that go in it, grouped by length, and the solver works out where each one fits. One whole word is already filled in to start them off.
Where do the words come from?
The built in English dictionary, which downloads once and is then cached on your PC. You set the size and the difficulty, and Word Fill finds the words that interlock, which is the part you would otherwise do by hand.
How many words are in one puzzle?
The board decides. A 9 by 9 comes out around thirty entries, a 13 by 13 around sixty. A bigger board is a longer list as well as a longer solve.
How dense is the grid?
Dense, the way a magazine or newspaper crossword is. Every letter on the board belongs to an across word and a down word at the same time, with nothing shorter than three letters anywhere, so no cell is carried by a single word. Three quarters of the board or more holds letters: a 13 by 13 runs around 130 of its 169 squares, with about sixty interlocking entries.
What is the difference between Easy and Regular?
Easy fills the grid from common words only. Regular draws on the full vocabulary with common words still preferred, and on the larger boards it uses a more open grid with longer entries, so the solve runs longer.
Does the word list print on the puzzle image?
Yes, by default: below the grid in three columns, so a loose puzzle image stands on its own. Move it above, left or right, change the column count, or take it off the image when the book page should carry it beside the grid instead.
What files do I get?
A puzzle image and a matching solution image for every puzzle, as JPG, PNG, SVG or PDF. Instant Puzzle Books turns those pairs into a finished interior as PDF or PowerPoint.
What does Productivity add?
Time Saver, which batches several different setups in one run, full Puzzle Book Studio for mixed books, JSON export for your own apps and workflows, and the right to sell or supply the puzzles you generate to other publishers and sellers.
What does Interactive add?
Web play. You publish a set to your own site through the free WordPress plugin, and readers solve it in the browser as a puzzle list or a leveled game. Buy it on top of either edition.
Can I sell the books and worksheets I make?
Yes. Word Fill lets you sell the finished books, worksheets and packs you make to your own readers and customers. Word Fill Productivity includes that, plus you may sell or supply the generated puzzles to other publishers and sellers.
Do I need to be online?
Once, so the built in dictionary can download and cache. After that you create on your Windows PC, offline.
Your Next Word Title Does Not Have to Be Another Word Search
Without a format the solver can actually finish, your word book competes on price with a thousand identical files, and the reader who gets stuck on page four never comes back for the sequel.
Six months from now your shelf has four Word Fill titles: a large print edition, a beginner set with a dozen starters already filled in, a magazine style collection for the solvers who know the format, and a 17 by 17 book for the ones who want the long sit, all built out of runs that took an afternoon each.
Start by making one. Try the free demo, then pick your edition above.
