How to play
Crossly is 300 crosswords in a fixed order, across 30 themed worlds of 10 levels each. You solve one, it opens the next. Everything below is the whole rulebook.
Getting started
You can play immediately without an account. Level 1 is one tap from the home page, and the game plays exactly the same either way — same puzzles, same grid, same reveals.
What an account changes:
| Guest | Account | |
|---|---|---|
| Progress | Kept for this browser tab only | Saved permanently |
| Scoring | Not scored, not timed | Timed and scored |
| Leaderboard | No | Yes |
| Ad break | Every 2 levels | Every 5 levels |
Signing up needs an email address you can receive mail at: scoring is switched on once you confirm the address, which is what keeps the leaderboard from filling with throwaway accounts.
Filling the grid
Tap or click any white square to select it. The answer running through it is highlighted, and its clue appears under the grid on a phone, or in the list beside it on a wider screen. Type letters to fill the answer.
Tap the same square again to turn the cursor: a square where an across answer and a down answer cross belongs to both, and tapping switches which one you are typing.
Typing steps over squares that are already filled. Once a crossing answer has written a letter for you, the cursor jumps past it to the next empty square in the word rather than stopping on a letter you would only have to type again. To change a letter you have already entered, move onto it with the arrow keys or tap it, then type.
There is no submit button. The moment the last empty square is filled, the grid is checked automatically. If something is wrong, the offending squares are marked — in red, and with a wedge in the top-right corner so the mark does not depend on seeing colour — and you can keep working.
Keyboard and touch
On a phone the game draws its own keyboard below the grid, so the device keyboard never covers the clue. On a physical keyboard, tab to the grid once and then:
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| A–Z | Fill the selected square and move to the next empty one |
| Arrow keys | Move a square, or turn the cursor if you press across the other axis |
| Enter / Space | Switch between across and down |
| Tab / Shift-Tab | Jump to the next or previous answer |
| Home / End | Jump to the first or last square of the current answer |
| Backspace | Clear the square, or step back and clear the one before it |
| Escape | Leave the grid, so Tab reaches the rest of the page again |
How scoring works
Score is difficulty multiplied by pace. Every level carries a base score fixed when the puzzle was built, and a par time derived from how many answers it has and how big the grid is. Both are frozen with the puzzle, so retuning the game later cannot change what an old score was measured against.
Solving pays:
- Base points, always, for finishing the level.
- A speed bonus of up to 60% of base. It is largest the instant you start and falls away in a straight line, reaching zero at twice par. Taking longer than that costs nothing further — you still get base.
- Minus 5% of base for each word you reveal (see below).
Whatever the arithmetic says, clearing a level never pays less than a quarter of its base points. Leaning on every reveal costs you the board, not the level.
The clock belongs to the server. It starts when the level opens and is measured against the server's own record, never your device's clock. The solution is checked on the server too — the answers are never sent to your browser.
Leaving a level idle for more than 5 minutes ends the attempt. It scores nothing, and the board offers you a restart. Closing the tab counts as leaving. Switching to another app for a moment does not: you get a minute's grace before the attempt is given up, so a glance at a notification cannot cost you a puzzle.
One scored attempt per level. A level you have completed is closed — there is no replaying it for a better time, which is what makes the leaderboard a record of a climb rather than of who ground the same puzzle the most.
Reveals and ads
The only assist in the game is revealing a whole word, and it is bought with a short advert rather than with points you already have. Up to 3 reveals per level; each fills in and locks every square of the answer you are on, and costs 5% of that level's base points.
If the advert does not play — it fails to load, you close it early, or an ad blocker stops it — nothing is revealed and nothing is deducted. There is no partial reward, and no way to buy a reveal with points instead.
Adverts also appear between levels: after every 2 levels as a guest, and every 5 with an account. They are how a game with no price tag and no in-app purchases pays for itself.
Unlocking levels
Levels run in one line from 1 to 300, and each opens when the one before it is finished. There is no level select that lets you skip ahead, and no way to buy your way past a puzzle.
The 30 worlds are 10 levels each, and each is a slice of the dictionary — Everyday Words first, and The Gauntlet last. They get harder in a deliberate ladder: the words in a later world are ones fewer people know, and the clues are written for later readers too.
The leaderboard
Players are ranked on total score across every level completed. Ties are broken by who has climbed furthest, so two players on the same points are separated by the one who is deeper into the game.
Each level also has its own board, ranked on time. Only confirmed accounts appear on either — guests are not scored, so there is nothing to rank.
Accessibility
The grid is a single tab stop that behaves like a standard composite widget: the arrow keys move inside it, every square announces its position and the answers crossing it, and Escape leaves. The selected clue sits in a live region every square points at, so a screen reader can re-read it without leaving the board.
Colour is never the only signal. A wrong letter carries a corner wedge and a revealed letter is underlined, for everybody. A colour-blind-safe mode in the game's top bar swaps the red/green pair — the one protanopia and deuteranopia collapse — for vermillion and blue, and the setting is remembered.
The whole site follows your system light or dark preference, and the theme switch in the header overrides it. Animation is dropped for anyone who asks their system to reduce motion.
Where the words come from
Every answer and every clue comes from Princeton WordNet, the lexical database. A word only qualifies as an answer if WordNet has a usable definition for it, because that definition becomes the clue. Nothing is invented, and nothing is scraped from other crosswords.
The puzzles are built and checked offline, not generated as you play, so every grid is fully interlocking and every level has been verified to be solvable and correctly graded before it ships.
Something wrong with a clue? A definition that reads oddly, or an answer that does not match it? Tell us which level and which clue — puzzle reports are the most useful mail we get.