XWord: the crossword addict's companion

This is the portal for the XWord anagram and word search engine from Puzzled Face.

The XWord dictionary is a constantly growing list of words and phrases that have been used in English language crosswords. Although based on British English, it also includes the names of famous people, places, geographic areas, foreign words and phrases in common use as well as the titles of books, films and plays.

The XWord dictionary currently contains 231806 words and phrases and 35 candidates awaiting approval.

Subscribers have access to the XWord dictionary via

  • This website
  • The XWord iPhone and iPad app (in alpha testing)
  • The XWord Crossword assistant software (in beta testing), which will run on Windows (7, Vista and XP), OS X, Linux, Unix and any operating system that supports Java version ****.

The XWord crossword assistant is free software designed to assist crossword solvers and compilers. It runs on all major operating systems and supports standard blocked (solid squares indicate word endings), barred (thick lines between squares indicate word endings) grids such as Azed crosswords found in The Observer and Listener crosswords found in The Times and hybrid grids containing both blocked and barred entries.

Access is not limited to a fixed number of hosts, although only one connection for a single subscription key is allowed at any one time.

If you are interested in helping to test any of our products that are still in development, please contact us. We can't offer any monetary reward for your time, but we will give you a free subscription to the Xword dictionary as a small token of our appreciation.

Software developers may also subscribe to the XWord web service. Please contact us for details.

Registered users may proceed to the login page.

Other readers may read on to see if XWord is of interest, or go to the registration page for a free, no obligation 14 day trial of the XWord dictionary.

The XWord dictionary may be searched in the following ways:

  • by word length: for example, "Find all known three word phrases with word lengths 3, 4 and 3".
  • for anagrams: for example, "Find all anagrams of the word 'CAT'".
  • for words with letters in known positions: for example, "Find all eight letter words and phrases with a 'T' in the fourth position".
  • in any combination of the criteria: for example, "Find all anagrams of 'so, so glad a dog' with an 'S' in the second position, a 'D' in the sixth position and with words of length 2, 4, 2 and 4". (The answer is 'AS GOOD AS GOLD', in case you're interested.)