S _ _ A _ _ K
Type what you know and leave blanks for what you do not. Every matching word in a 172,000-word dictionary, instantly — for crosswords, hangman, and anything else with gaps in it.
Underscores, dots, question marks or asterisks for the blanks. Spaces are ignored, so you can lay it out however you like.
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This does not look up the clue
Most sites ranking for “crossword solver” hold a database of clues and answers scraped from published puzzles. You type the clue, they find a puzzle that used it, and hand you the answer.
That works only for puzzles already in the database, and it is not really solving anything — it is reading somebody else's completed grid.
This solves the pattern, which is the part that is genuinely hard once you have two or three crossing letters. It works on today's puzzle, on one nobody has published, and on the one in a newspaper from 1987.
For hangman, the wrong guesses matter most
Five blanks with an I in the middle is 400-odd words. The same pattern, knowing that A, O and U are not in it, is a fraction of that — and you already have that information, because you spent guesses on it.
Nearly every pattern tool ignores it. Put your wrong letters in the second box and the list collapses, which is usually the difference between a shortlist and a shrug.
Which blank to fill in next
In a crossword, take the crossing that is easiest rather than the one that looks most important. Any confirmed letter cuts the candidate list by roughly an order of magnitude, and a letter is a letter wherever it sits.
One exception: the last letter is worth more than the rest. English word endings are highly constrained — a confirmed final letter narrows a list further than a confirmed first letter does, and if you can guess a plural S or a past-tense D you have often halved the problem before starting.
Also useful for
Cryptic crosswords
Once the wordplay gives you two or three letters, the pattern usually settles it — and cryptics rarely use words this dictionary lacks.
Word searches and jumbles
Any puzzle where you have partial letters in fixed positions is the same problem in different packaging.
Half-remembered words
You know it starts with ph and ends in nal and it is driving you mad. Pattern, blanks, done.
Spelling bees and quizzes
Confirming a word exists before committing to it, against a real dictionary rather than a hunch.
If you have letters but no positions, the word unscrambler is the tool. For constraints on the ends rather than a full pattern, the word finder searches by start, end and contains at once. And for coloured tiles specifically, the Wordle helper handles yellows properly.
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