Editors' review
Crossword puzzle and word search enthusiasts who want to try their hand at creating their own will appreciate the tools and help found in Crossword Forge. While you won't be able to print or view your puzzles without the answers displayed, you can still get a good sense of how this program works.
The interface is designed for business, with tabs for easy access to create your puzzle in steps, from the title to the background. The hardest part is coming up with the clues and answers. Crossword Forge makes the rest fairly simple, and you need only type in your clues and answers in their appropriate fields. Hit the Make Puzzle key and your puzzle is arranged for you. By default, the program will try and fit in every answer, but you can also specify how many of your answers you want Crossword Forge to shoot for. We were pretty impressed with the results and how many of our answers were arranged in official crossword format. Like a standard word processor, you'll find simple options to choose the font, its size and style, and to designate block size and puzzle width and height. Educators will like the numerous language options, including Russian, Spanish, and Arabic.
There is no time restriction given for Crossword Forge, but you can only view or print your puzzles with the answers displayed. The same goes when exporting to bitmap, text, or PDF format. The Web export option is completely disabled, but you can see a sample Web puzzle. We recommend Crossword Forge for anyone interested in making puzzles for the classroom or just for fun.
Publisher's Description
Quickly and easily create high-quality, high-density newspaper style or classromm style crossword and word search puzzles, with colorful backdrops, in almost any language, on any subject. Generate puzzles from your words for the web, print, and PDF. Features: Puzzle Mask editor. Word Suggester. Color and Picture backdrops. Supports puzzle grids of any size. Generate high quality Flash web, print and PDF puzzles, puzzle images, and puzzle text. Type puzzle data directly or import it from many different text formats. Built-in spell checker. Unlimited undo and redo. Support for restricted word lists in word search mode (i.e. helps eliminate objectionable words in your word search puzzles). Bonus Clues for Crossword and Word Search puzzles. Multiple lines for puzzle titles. Font, Style, Size and Justification controls. Unlimited clue and answer length. Customizable Across and Down text. Puzzle clues can span multiple pages. Customizable grid block size. Allows for manual puzzle repositioning within backdrop.
What's new in this version:
Version 7.3:
- Writing mask letters in the puzzle mask editor is now easier and more obvious. We now include a "Write" control specifically for this purpose.
- Added an "Update Word List..." in the mask editor which will synchronize your changes from the puzzle mask editor to the main word list. This allows you to build puzzle manually much easier than before. Here's the basic synchronization rules: 1. If the word is only in the mask it will add it to the word list and the puzz... See all new features »
