Crossword Solver
Match a pattern like c_t or cr_ss__rd against real words.
Enter known letters in their exact position and an underscore or question mark for every blank square — the total length of what you type is treated as the exact word length to search.
How it works
Crossword grids give you a mix of known letters (the ones you've already filled in from crossing answers) and blank squares. Enter that pattern using underscores or question marks for the unknowns — c_t, for example, matches any three-letter word with C first and T last regardless of the middle letter — and the solver checks every word of the matching length in the ENABLE dictionary against your pattern, position by position.
This is a genuinely different search problem from the unscrambler or anagram tools: pattern matching doesn't care about letter frequency or rearrangement at all, only whether each known position matches exactly and the word is the right total length. A pattern like cr_ss__rd (nine letters, with C, R, S, S, R, D fixed and three unknowns) narrows the ENABLE word list from over 172,000 entries down to a small, exact-length candidate set almost instantly, because the length constraint alone eliminates the overwhelming majority of the dictionary before any letter-by-letter comparison even runs.
The tool works for any crossword style — daily newspaper grids, cryptic crossword answer grids once you've decoded the wordplay, or word-search-adjacent puzzles that give you a partial word. It's pattern-length aware, so a pattern with five underscores and one letter is treated as strictly six letters long; there's no fuzzy length matching.
As with the other SnagWord solvers, matching happens against the client-loaded portion of the dictionary for the pattern's exact length, entirely in-browser.
Tips & strategy
Fill in crossing letters before you search
The more known letters you can supply from intersecting answers, the more the pattern search narrows — a pattern with only one known letter in a 7-letter word can still return dozens of candidates, while two or three known letters usually gets you to a short, scannable list.
Double-check the total length against the grid
A common mistake is miscounting blank squares — count the grid cells carefully before typing your pattern, since a pattern one character too long or short will silently search for the wrong word length and return nothing useful.
Use it to verify a guess, not just to find one
If you have a candidate answer in mind but aren't sure it fits the crossing letters, type the full pattern with your guessed letters included in the unknown spots — a quick way to confirm or rule out a hunch before committing ink (or a digital tap) to the grid.
For cryptic grids, solve the wordplay first, then verify the pattern
In cryptic crosswords, the pattern search is best used as a final check once you believe you've decoded the clue's wordplay — searching a bare pattern alone in a cryptic grid tends to return too many candidates to be useful, since cryptic answers aren't chosen for being common words.
FAQ
What symbol should I use for unknown letters?
Either an underscore (_) or a question mark (?) — both are treated identically as "any single letter" in that position. Use whichever is faster to type; c_t and c?t return the same results.
Can I search for a pattern with no known letters at all?
Yes, though the result set will simply be every word of that length in the ENABLE dictionary — useful mainly to browse a word-length list, but not narrowed by any pattern information yet.
Does this work for word searches, not just crosswords?
Yes — the same pattern-matching logic applies to any puzzle where you know a word's length and a few fixed letters, including word-search puzzles, hangman-style guessing, and fill-in-the-blank word games.
Why does a valid word I know not show up?
Check first that your pattern length exactly matches the word's length (a common cause), and second that the word is in the ENABLE public-domain word list — a small number of proper nouns, abbreviations, and very new words aren't included; see /methodology/ for the full dictionary source.