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Enter a crossword clue exactly as printed and get confidence-ranked answers. Works for definitions, geography, mythology, science, and general knowledge.
Every crossword clue is essentially a compressed definition. The puzzle editor writes a phrase that points to a specific word — sometimes directly ("Capital of France" → PARIS), sometimes through a category ("Chess piece" → ROOK, KING, BISHOP, PAWN, or QUEEN), and sometimes through wordplay ("Mixed-up notes" → TONES, an anagram of STONE). Our clue solver handles direct definition and category clues best.
The engine tokenizes your clue, removes stop words, and scores each candidate word against three data sources: a curated seed corpus of known clue-answer pairs, dictionary definitions and synonyms, and metadata fields like category tags, hypernyms, and usage notes. Each layer contributes to the final confidence percentage shown beside each result.
When you add the answer length from your grid, the engine filters candidates before scoring — a major accuracy improvement. A clue like "Chess piece" returns five plausible answers without a length filter; add length 4 and only KING and ROOK remain.
For the full crossword-solving experience — combining clue mode with pattern mode — use the main Crossword Solver.
Straight / definition clues are the most common type: the clue is a synonym or direct definition of the answer. "Large African river (7)" means a seven-letter river in Africa — ZAMBEZI. "Greek god of war (4)" is ARES. These score highest in our engine because the token overlap with dictionary definitions is direct.
Category and example clues name a class of things and expect any valid member: "Chess piece", "South American capital", or "Type of pasta". These return multiple valid answers — use the length filter and crossing letters to select the correct one.
Fill-in-the-blank clues complete a famous phrase or title: "___ the Terrible" → IVAN. Enter just the non-blank words for best results: "terrible tsar" often works better than the exact printed form.
Cryptic clues combine a straight definition with a wordplay component (anagram, hidden word, reversal, homophone). Our clue mode handles the definition component; use Anagram Solver for anagram indicators, or pattern mode for reversals once you have partial crossing letters.