Features

Mini crosswords with multimedia

Quick and convenient to solve on mobile devices, mini crosswords (5×5, 7×7 and other sizes) are all the rage, and PuzzleMe supports them with a unique twist – the clues can have video, audio and images embedded in them. Our player provides a smooth user experience for mini puzzles with an on-screen keyboard for mobile devices that does not occlude the grid. Mini puzzles are supported for all languages.

Click here to play this puzzle and figure out where Homer disappears.

Video clues

Whether you are a professional constructor or a novice, you can use PuzzleMe to enliven your puzzles with multimedia clues. Expert puzzle constructor Will Nediger has added some video clues to his puzzle, “Pivot to Video” using PuzzleMe (self-referentially, the video clips are about crosswords themselves!). Will first wrote this puzzle using Crossword Compiler, imported the XML file into PuzzleMe, and then edited the clues to insert video links from Youtube. You can also use other video formats, such as mp4.

Clues can have text and/or media components, so if you have offline or print users, you can still  retain text clues that don’t depend on the multimedia.

Audio clues

This puzzle is about famous speeches from American history. It features brief snippets of famous speeches (under fair use) and uses an evocative image for the puzzle backdrop. It also uses PuzzleMe’s merchandise link feature, whereby a product can be promoted by inserting a link to it from the puzzle screen (see the shopping cart icon at top right).

Click here to play the online version.

Crucigramas

Some puzzles in European languages — especially French and Spanish — do not use clue numbers to associate clues with answers, but instead have column and row numbers. PuzzleMe can support this “chess numbering” format easily for any language. Here is a Spanish puzzle in the chess numbering format.

Spanish case study: Univision, the leading Spanish-language network in North America, uses PuzzleMe to run both crossword and sudoku puzzles in Spanish. It runs two “crucigramas” (11×11 and 5×5), and three levels of sudoku every day.

Mots croisés

French Case study: Acadie Nouvelle, a French newspaper in New Brunswick, Canada, uses PuzzleMe to run French puzzles in 2 series: a daily 12×12 puzzle, and a larger subscribers-only, 20×20 contest puzzle on Saturdays. Acadie Nouvelle directly enters their syndicated print puzzle into PuzzleMe’s puzzle editor to make it playable online. It takes 15 minutes a day to enter a puzzle, and many weeks’ puzzles can be entered in advance. The puzzles automatically go live at the scheduled publication time, so that no management of the crossword page is needed on a day to day basis. Click here for the live “Mots croisés” site.

Palavras Cruzadas

In some crossword formats, clues are written directly inside the grid (see image on the left for a typical Slovak puzzle), sometimes along with arrows. This layout is sometimes called “arrowword” (or “Mots Fléchés” in French). While it is suitable for a large printed page, it is difficult to read on small screens. XML files for such puzzles are automatically reformatted by PuzzleMe to a regular format to make them playable online (see image on the right). The clues are written outside the grid, but the grid layout and clues are exactly the same.

Click here to play the Slovak puzzle pictured alongside or here to play a “Palavras Cruzadas” puzzle in Portuguese. These puzzles have both been reformatted from the original arrowword.

Innovative grids

This is a puzzle on India that ran in the BBC’s Listener magazine in April, 1930. Its grid is shaped like a map of India and the clues and answers are a wonderful reflection of the subcontinent’s history (including the archaic British spellings).

The online version illustrates PuzzleMe’s support for odd-shaped grids (using void cells), cell background colors, and barred grids. Click here to play it online. You can also see the original puzzle in the Listener’s archives. (Puzzle content (c) Listener magazine.)

With PuzzleMe, grid cells can have many decorations, such as circles, thick walls and even images.

This is an example of a puzzle with an image in the grid. And Eenadu, a respected news publisher in India, runs Telugu-language puzzles with pretty patterns in the grid in place of the black boxes.

Pre-roll and customized messages

PuzzleMe enables you to introduce customized HTML messaging at the start of a puzzle, at the end of a puzzle, or when the puzzle is paused. For example, The New Yorker crosswords include their iconic cartoons in their pause and completion messages. The completion message links an interesting reference in the puzzle to a related article from their archives as a way of driving deeper engagement into the site.

These messaging points can also be used to introduce promotions or ads.

In addition, PuzzleMe can invoke a video pre-roll to a VAST-compliant ad server (such as DFP) before the puzzle picker is loaded. For an effective implementation of video pre-roll, see The Washington Post crosswords.

Word search puzzles

This is a large word search puzzle from Auspac, Australia. It illustrates PuzzleMe’s ability to have unusual shapes and holes in the grid for word search puzzles (also called “WordFind” in some countries). The hole could optionally be filled with an image, instructions, a sponsor’s message, etc.

This is also a 2-layered puzzle, which makes it more fun than normal word search puzzles. Finding all the words in the grid, and reading the remaining letters across the grid reveals the phrase “Climbing trees in the park”. Click here to play a live version.

Word search with clues

PuzzleMe Word search has another twist: it can include clues as well. So instead of directly listing words to find in the grid, you could have multimedia or text clues that players have to solve first. Try this word search with pictures of famous Indian cricketers from yesteryear!

Sudoku puzzles

PuzzleMe Sudoku supports the full range of Sudoku puzzles including 9×9 (with easy, medium, hard and expert levels of difficulty), 16×16, Sudoku X, Killer Sudoku and different sizes such as 6×6, 8×8, 10×10, 12×12 and 16×16. It has all the features you’d expect like pencil mode to jot down candidates, conflict marking and customized L&F options. But it also has features you’d not expect, like a clever Sudoku tutor that teaches users how to get better at Sudoku. The tutor gives step by step hints for the simplest tactics, such as elimination, to the most advanced, such as “X-Wing” and “XY-Wing”, which are needed to solve “impossibly hard” puzzles. And PuzzleMe Sudoku also has social play, so you can play Sudoku with friends too!

We can provide you readymade Sudoku puzzles at varying levels of difficulty and size. You can also import your own Sudoku puzzle files or type them into PuzzleMe if you wish. The same puzzle management workflow for crosswords applies to Sudoku and wordsearch puzzles too, making it easy to manage all your puzzles consistently.

Wordoku and Picdoku

Lest you think Sudoku is just for number geeks, try this Wordoku puzzle where the rules are the same as Sudoku, but the letters are changed to GANDHI 150! The Hindu ran this puzzle to mark Mahatma Gandhi’s 150 birth anniversary. With PuzzleMe, you can solve Sudoku puzzles with any other letters or even emojis.

Also shown alongside is this Picdoku puzzle with patterns instead of numbers. Play sudoku with your own set of personalized images!

You can easily convert any Sudoku puzzle to a wordoku or picdoku puzzle using the PuzzleMe editor. Our sudoku tutor will work with these formats too!

PuzzleMe has many, many more features. Feel free to login and explore the platform. We can provide other word or logic based games on request. Please contact us to discuss how PuzzleMe can help you.