About

Decryptic Crossword

A fresh cryptic crossword every day. The grids are built and filled automatically from free, openly licensed word lists.

How the clues are checked

A draft is not a published clue. Every clue passes two gates before it reaches you: an automatic check that its wordplay genuinely builds the answer, and a person reading the finished puzzle. Clues that fail either one are rewritten or thrown away. How that works is set out below.

Editorial standards

Decryptic is assembled by software and edited by a person. Both halves are necessary, because they catch entirely different things.

The grids are filled from the word lists below, and the first draft of each clue's wordplay is written with AI. Writing cryptic clues that are both fair and read as fluent English is hard to do mechanically, and there isn't yet a better way to produce them at the quality and pace a daily puzzle needs. What follows is what has to happen to a draft before it counts as a clue.

What the software checks

Every clue is verified against its own declared wordplay before it can be accepted. The letters the clue claims to be working with have to actually produce the answer, using the operation it names, in the order it names. A clue whose wordplay doesn't spell its answer is rejected and re-requested. Answers are also screened against an obscenity blocklist, and against every answer used in the previous seven puzzles, so the same words don't keep coming round.

That check is strict, but it is narrow. It can prove an anagram really is an anagram. It cannot tell whether the definition is fair, whether the surface reads as English, or whether a clue is simply no fun to solve.

What I check

So I read every puzzle myself before it is published, and I fix what needs fixing. That pass asks:

• Is the definition really a definition of the answer, in the sense the clue implies?
• Is the indicator one a solver could reasonably be expected to recognise?
• Does the enumeration match the answer?
• Does the clue read as a sentence, rather than as an instruction wearing a thin disguise?
• Does some other answer fit the clue just as well?
• Has the grid or the clue landed somewhere tasteless by accident?

Clues that fail this pass are rewritten. Where a clue can't be saved, the answer is reclued from scratch, and if the answer itself is the problem the grid is refilled around it. Nothing is published because it was the best the machine could manage.

Corrections

Things still get through. When a published clue turns out to be unsound I correct it, and the solution page for that puzzle is regenerated with the corrected clue rather than quietly left as it was.

If you find one, please tell me: badclues@decryptic.app. The clue number and what you think is wrong with it is plenty. I read every one.

Get in touch

Decryptic is a one-person hobby project, built by Inthrall to help more people discover how to solve cryptic crosswords.

Bad clues go to badclues@decryptic.app, as above. For a bug, a suggestion, or anything else at all, I'd love to hear it: hello@decryptic.app.

The contact page has the longer version: which address suits what, what's worth including, and what happens to a clue you report.

Word lists & licences

The answers are filled — and explained — from these freely licensed sources:

• ENABLE dictionary: public domain.
• Spread the Wordlist by Brooke Husic & Enrique Henestroza Anguiano (spreadthewordlist.com): CC0 1.0.
• English headwords and the answer definitions from Wiktionary, extracted via kaikki.org: CC BY-SA 4.0 / GFDL.
• List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene, and Otherwise Bad Words by Shutterstock, Inc. (LDNOOBW), used unmodified as a blocklist: CC BY 4.0.
• WordNet 3.0, Princeton University — the explanation shown when you reveal an answer is WordNet's own definition of the word. WordNet 3.0 Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University, used under the WordNet licence.

Source & licence

Decryptic's source code is available under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0 — free for noncommercial use. For commercial use, email licence@decryptic.app.

One exception: the answer definitions — the explanation shown when you reveal a word — come from Wiktionary and WordNet rather than from us, and are licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, not under the licence above. You're free to reuse them, commercially included, provided you attribute them and share them alike.