Crossword Solver King Guide

User guide for Crossword Solver King and Crossword Solver King Pro apps for Android.

Crossword Solver King has over 500,000 words, phrases and synonyms which you can easily search helping you find those difficult crossword clues.

The guide will explain how to use the app for solving crosswords, make the best use of advanced features like filters and other powerful searches you can do for other word games such as Scrabble and Countdown.

Welcome

To quickly familiarise yourself with the app, there is an interactive list of the various search types for you to try out. Press the SHOW ME button on each of the hints to see what it does. Press MORE INFO to display a page explaining the search type in greater detail.

You enter your own search queries in the text box at the top of the app and then press the SEARCH button to start the search. Press the X button (top-right) in the tool bar to clear a query.

Pressing the menu button will give you options for settings, information about the app and a link to this user guide.

To return to the main help screen from a search, press the back button.

Clues

Enter the clue and the app will search its built in thesaurus to find related words. Eg enter condiment to find ketchup, mustard, wasabi and more. The thesaurus also contains common phrases, so you can enter multiple words, just use a hyphen to separate the words, eg enter close-shave to find narrow escape.

For cryptic clues enter the first word and last word of the clue and the app will find synonyms for both words.

The app will also find anagrams of the word you enter and the results table is divided into two sections: synonyms and anagrams.

Tip! If the app is unable to find any synonyms try again with another similar meaning word.

Tip! If the list of synonyms does not contain the answer you need, touch and hold a synonym and a pop-up menu will appear, select search and the app may find more synonyms.

Missing Letters

As you fill out a crossword you will also fill out other clues with letters. Use the app to find matching words, you use a question mark (?) to represent a missing (unknown) letter:

r??p?????

The app finds 64 words such as raspberry, ragpicker and respected. You can quickly scroll through the results to find your word. For any words that you do not know the meaning, press the spy glass icon to the right of the word to look it up.

You can also use full-stops (periods), to represent missing letters, enter c..v.r to find clever, clover, carver.


If you don't have any letters yet, cryptic clues helpfully give you some, for example:

Sort of cable - flatter one, aluminium (7)

I'm going to assume sort of cable is the definition, even though sort indicates an anagram. I cannot yet think of another word for flatter, but i for one (Roman numeral I) and Al for the chemical symbol for Aluminium, so try ????ial

Out of the 59 nine matches, coaxial looks right as it is a type of cable and coax means to flatter.

Tip! Consonants, especially JKMQWXZ are really good for narrowing down the number of matches

Tip!! Depending on the clue you can guess the ending of a word, s, ed, ing. Plug these letters to help find the right word in.

Tip!!! If an unknown letter must be a vowel, use ! instead of ?

Phrases

The app has over 100,000 built in phrases - common sayings, hyphenated words, names etc. Use a hyphen to separate words, eg enter a????n?-??a?? to find amazing grace

Tip!  You only need one or two letters for the app to find only a few possible answers, a great way to start your crossword off.

Tip! As a convenience you can use a comma , instead of hyphen - to separate words

Shortcuts

If you have many missing letters, you can use numbers to represent a group of missing letters.

Enter m4-3-6 to find miles per gallon, milky way galaxy and motte and bailey

m4-3-6 is equivalent to entering m????-???-??????

Anagrams

Crosswords,  especially cryptic crosswords, usually have several anagram clues, denoted by (anag.) for concise crosswords and many other sneaky indicators for cryptic clues.

To find anagrams enter the letters and press search, for example:

enter eprsu 

to find pursue, sprue and super

The app will also find sub-anagrams, smaller words using the same letters that you entered. These are useful for puzzles such as Wordwheels, TV shows like Countdown and games like Word Cookie and 4 Pics 1 Word.

Tip! You can turn off sub-anagrams from the settings menu

Note! If the anagram you enter is already a word, the app will first try to find synonyms. Anagrams will appear after the synonyms.

Two Word Anagrams

Enter Manchester-United to find mechanised nutter, inducement haters, untested chairmen

The hyphen indicates to the app to look for two words that use all the letters. In the example above the app will first search for words of length 10 and 6 letters, and then search for other combinations of words that total 16 letters.

Three word anagrams are also supported, try cli-ntea-stwood to find old west action. The spaces in the query set the size of the 3 words to be searched, 3-4-6 in this example. In practice you will find that most 3 word searches will return 1000's of results and may take 10 seconds or more. For crosswords, I find it is better to guess one of the words in a 3 word answer, such as and or the.

The app will first search its built-in list of phrases and then its 310K word list. When searching the word list, the app fit together random words that fit the anagram, most matches are nonsense but occasionally it will hit a proper phrase/saying or even an amusing answer.

Blank Letters

In games such as Scrabble you have blank tiles representing any letter, in the app you use + to represent a blank tile.

Enter google++++ to find bootlegger, boondoggle, egyptology

For cryptic crossword clues, you may be given part of the answer as an anagram and the remaining letters you will have to deduce from the rest of the clue. So you could enter the anagram letters and +'s for the remaining letters. For example, here is a clue from the i newspaper:

22ac Stratus spreading around break of day - something in the heavens (8)

Spreading indicates an anagram , stratus is one letter short but we can use + for the unknown letter.

stratus+ returns 7 matches: stardust, startups, statures, stratous, stratums, turistas, upstarts

Stardust is something in the heavens, and break of day indicates d, the first letter of the word day, so stardust is the answer. Notice how the app highlights the blank letter in the list of results.

Tip! You can set the blank letter colour in the settings menu

Definitions

You can press the information icon on the right of a word to look up its definition, example usages and synonyms: 

1. Press the speaker icon next to word to hear it spoken. Note there maybe a slight delay before the sound is played.
2. The definitions are ordered by noun (n), verb (v), adjective (adj) and adverb (adv)
3. Synonyms are colour highlighted and are underlined, you can click on them to view their definition.
4. If you prefer to see the definition on the web, press the magnifying glass icon on the right of the word.

For web look-ups, you can change from Google to Merriam-Webster, MW Thesaurus, Collins or Wikipedia via the settings menu. For Scrabble fans I recommend the Word Game Dictionary lookup which checks if the word is allowed, its score and definition.

The app works with the English Dictionary App from Livio, an offline dictionary. If you have the English Dictionary app installed, you can send words to the app for it to display their definition.

To quickly access the various dictionary providers, you can long press a word to bring up a menu of options:

The pop-up menu is quite large now, so you may have to scroll the menu to see all the options. Pressing copy will copy the word to the system clip board which you can paste back into the query field on the main screen. Copy All will paste all the words to the clip board so you can paste them into some other app.

NYT Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee puzzles are where you only use the letters provided, but as many times as you like. The middle letter of the puzzle must be included in every word found. Words must be 4 or more letters.

Try $qntuaei to find quinquina, aquanaut and queenie

In this example the middle letter is q and is the first letter after $

Wordle

1. For known letters try the missing letters search, eg ??e?t
2. Use the excludes letters filter for letters you know are not in the word
3. Use the includes letters filter for letters that are in the word

Suffix @ Prefix

This search type is not very useful for cruciverbalists but will be useful to wordsmiths.

Whereas a ? represents a single letter, @ represents 1 or more letters

Enter @ace to find face, hyperspace, peace

You can also mix ? and @ in your search,

Enter sup@x? to find supergalaxy

Here @ represents ergala and the ? y

Supergrams

Find larger words that contain your anagram letters, use * to represent 1 or more extra letters (blank tiles)

Enter microsoft* to find discomforting, nonconformists, oversimplification

nonconformists contains all the letters in microsoft plus nnnos.

Filters

Most searches will return an overwhelming 5000 results, to help you find the right word the app has powerful filters to help you narrow down your search.

Lets first look at an example:

1ac Cross inlaid with gold on church vessel(8)

I have letters a and p, so I try ?a???p??

64 Matches, let's see if we can narrow this down. The clue mentions gold, typically this means letters Au, or, ore. I will use a filter to look for words containing the word 'au'.

Press the pink filter button bottom right. Enter au into the word filter:

Press search:

Saucepan looks good, it contains letters CE for church and span means to cross, so span is inlaid with auce to give saucepan which is a vessel.

Containing Letters

Filter words that contain the letters you have specified, the order of the letters does not matter and you can specify a letter more than once. So aabc will filter words that contain at least 2 a's, 1 b and 1c.

For Wordle players, enter known (highlighted yellow) letters

Containing Word

Like Containing Letters filter but the order of the letters must be the same. So abc will filter words containing the letters (in order) abc.

Excluding Word filter is the opposite and will reject results that contain the word you enter here.

Excluding Letters 

Exclude words that contain any of the letters you have specified. This filter is useful if you do Codeword crosswords. For Wordle players, enter the grey letters here.

Starting With / Ending With

Only include words that start or end with the letters (in order) you have specified. You can change the filters to Not Starting With or Nor Ending With by checking the Not buttons.

Distinct

Only allow words where are the letters are different, so better is filtered out but best is allowed.

Repeated Letters

This is the opposite of the distinct filter and only allows words that contain some letters which are repeated, so best if filtered out but better is allowed.

Word Size

Search for words bigger than a certain size, smaller than a certain size or equal to a specific length you have set.

Advanced filters

Specify a word pattern, similar to a crossword (missing letter) search, use . for an unknown letter.  So ?tr??? will look for 6 letter words where the second letter is a t and the third an r. This is useful for Scrabble games where you specify the letters on the board you want to use. You also can use @ to mean 1 or more letters.

The Regular Expression filter is for advanced users who know RegEx, a powerful matching tool used in computer string processing, don't panic I will give you a quick guide.

In the word pattern filter, your pattern is converted into RegEx. So a . is converted in [a-z] meaning any letter a to z, @ is converted to [a-z]+ meaning 1 or more letters. Here are some more examples:

• [aeiou] letter must be a vowel
• [a-z]* any letter none or more times
• [a-z]+ any letter one or more times
• [a-z] any letter just once

For a simple crib sheet, please take a loot at https://www.petefreitag.com/cheatsheets/regex/ 

I will also mention this example that a user sent in, he wanted to use the letters thidgof to find all words made by any combination of those letters and each letter could be used multiple times, so for example food, foot.

1. Enter * for the main query, this will match all words
2. Enter [thidgof]+ in the Regular Expression filter

Codewords

Codeword crosswords substitute numbers for each letter of the alphabet. You are shown a completed grid of numbers, given 3 letters and you then have to deduce what the numbers are for each letter.

The first step is to fill out the grid with the letters you are given. You then have to try work out words that will fit the grid, this can be tricky but words that use the same letter more than once will be easier to guess.

Lets say you have a word that is made up of the following numbers:

14 12 8 8 23 17 17 23

The 3rd/4th letters are the same,so are the  5th/8th and 6th/7th. In the app enter this query:

??112332

The app finds 11 matches, including barrette, cassette and pallette.

Breaking down the query, ??112332, ? represents an unknown letter that is only used once and the numbers represent letters that are the same, here I specified 3 letters than must be the same 1,2 and 3. So for cassette, 1 is S, 2 is E and 3 is T. Mapping this back to the clue, 14 12 8 8 23 17 17 23, 1 is 8, 2 is 23 and 3 is 17, so S is 8, E is 23 and T is 17.

Lets say we already had E, you would then enter the query as ??11E22E

Notice that I use 2 for the T now.

The Excluding Letters filter is really handy for Codewords, lets say we already have letters LMFR, so we can exclude any words that contain these letters:

 Enter the letters you already know that aren't in the clue, press search.

The app now only matches cassette.

Tip! Be sure to use the Distinct / Repeated Letters filters when doing Codeword puzzles.

Settings

You can get to the settings screen by pressing the menu key (top right) and then pressing Settings from the menu. The settings are split into 3 categories:

Search Settings

• Dictionary Definition - choose which dictionary website to use when you press the information icon next to a word
• Word List - Select the word list that the app uses. For Words With Friends, chose one of the Scrabble word lists, these lists do not contain disallowed words. If you are overwhelmed with too many matches, try the smaller Essential words list.
• Results Limit - You can set the maximum number of results returned to 100, 500, 1000 or 5000.
• Show Sub-anagrams -  If you only want to see pure anagrams and no sub-anagrams you can deselect this option.
• Show Synonyms - The app will search for synonyms of words and display any that are found. If you only want anagrams to be shown, uncheck this option.

Appearance Settings

• Results Size - You can set the font size of the results and even select a large mono-spaced font.
• Letter Highlighting - Chose the colour of the letters in Blank and Supergram searches
• Dark Mode - The app now supports a dark mode theme: System - uses your Android setting for dark mode, Battery Saver - dark mode is used when the battery is low.
• Show Filter - If the filter button is in the way, you can remove it here by deselecting this option
• Show Copy Result Button - select this option to show the copy button on each result

Keyboard Settings

• Show Keyboard - Automatically opens up the keyboard when you go to the main screen.
• Keyboard Layout - Select standard or compact layout
• Space to ? - Select this option to convert spaces to ? which are used for unknown letters
• Full Stop to ? - Select this option to converts dots (.) to ? which are used for unknown letters.

Tip! You can reset the settings back to their default values from the menu

Advertisements

The app only shows one ad banner along the bottom of the screen. The ads are provided by Google Admob. You can purchase an ad free version of this app from the Play Store.

From the menu, press About & Privacy, scroll to the advertisements section, press the BUY AD FREE VERSION button, you will be taken to the Pro version of the app on the Google Play Store.

From the About & Privacy screen you can also select to show more or less relevant ads. Google Admob uses tracking data to tailor ads to you, you can stop Admob from tracking you (and using any data it may have collected about you) by electing to show less relevant ads.

Help Out

Thanks for using the app and if you have upgraded to Pro, thanks again.

If you can think of any other uses for the app, please enter them in the comments below. Reading comments in the app store and feedback from emails, users have found all sorts of uses for the app such as deciphering handwriting, learning English, writing poetry,  writing quizzes, creating puzzles and even helping with a hearing disability ( I think they enter part of the word they heard)

Spread the word and tell your friends about the app, there is a recommend button on the Help Out tip to send your friends a link to the app on the Play Store. You can also send me feedback via email and rate the app.

I hope you will enjoy using the app for years to come, remember it's not cheating - just saving you a little time ;)

Mark

App Developer

Updated 12th Oct 2023 for v3.33