About PuzzleBirch

What it does

PuzzleBirch makes printable puzzles from your own material: a word search from a spelling list, a crossword from a topic's key words and clues, a cryptogram from a class motto, along with sudoku at four levels and mazes of any size. Each one prints cleanly in black on white, with the answer key on a separate page, and the browser's print window can save it as a PDF. For when you are stuck, there is a sudoku solver that gives one explained hint at a time, a word unscrambler and a five-letter word finder.

How it works

Everything happens in your browser. Your words, clues and puzzles are not uploaded or stored anywhere; once a page has loaded, the tools work without an internet connection, and after a first visit the site keeps working offline.

Each puzzle is built from a number, shown on the page and printed in its footer. The same number with the same settings always gives the same puzzle, so you can print it again next year or share a link with a colleague. The settings in a link sit after the # in the address, which your browser never sends to any server.

The site counts visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which records page views without cookies or cross-site tracking and never receives what you type into the tools. There are no accounts, adverts or other trackers.

The word list

The word unscrambler and the five-letter word finder use ENABLE (Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon), a list of 172,823 English words that its authors placed in the public domain and that word-game programs have used for many years. The copy here comes from the game-ready-dictionary package (version 1.0.6), whose word lists are also dedicated to the public domain under the Unlicense. It is stored on this site and loaded from here only on the two pages that need it.

Nothing has been removed from the list. A short list of 195 slurs and strong swear words (with their plurals and other forms) is hidden by default and shown only if you untick “Hide rude words”. The word search maker also makes sure its random filler letters never spell a rude word by accident.

Typefaces

Headings are set in DM Serif Display, text in Atkinson Hyperlegible Next and puzzle letters in Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono, typefaces designed to keep similar letters easy to tell apart. All three are free under the SIL Open Font License and are served from this site.

Using the puzzles

Puzzles you make are yours: print them, copy them for a class, put them in a newsletter. If you use text from elsewhere in a cryptogram or crossword, check that you are allowed to; your own words and public-domain quotes are always safe.