Free Printable Crossword Puzzles
and Other Brain Games

Search by Keyword

For a collection of Printable Crossword Puzzles, scroll down this page, or visit the links shown below. The crossword puzzle on this page contains state names, state abbreviations and American cities.

The goal of a crossword puzzle is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving the clues. Each answer begins in a numbered square, and is spelled either left-to-right (across), or top-to-bottom (down).

To print these images, just right click on the puzzle grid or clues and select a SAVE option from the drop-down menu. Do the same for the across clues, the down clues, and the solution grid, also shown below. Saving these images will send them to your picture file. From there you can reduce or enlarge the images, and adjust the margins as needed before printing.

When you are ready, print the images, grab a pencil, and start solving these original printable crossword puzzles.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT CROSSWORD PUZZLES:

The first crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne, and appeared in the Christmas edition of the "New York World" in 1913.

When the "New York World" tried to discontinue its weekly crossword puzzle, the resulting public outrage forced the magazine to reinstate the crossword puzzle feature just one week later.

The first crossword puzzle ever created was diamond-shaped.

Crossword puzzles used to be called Word-cross puzzles.

The first book dedicated entirely to crossword puzzles was published in 1924, authored by Dick Simon and Lincoln Schuster.

Simon and Schuster still publishes Crossword Puzzle Books. The original series ended in 2007 after 258 volumes.

The creating of crossword puzzles is called cruciverbalism.

Crossword puzzles are NOT case-sensitive. However, most crossword solvers find capital letters easiest to use in a typical puzzle grid. The main reason for capital letters is that they eliminate the potential confusion between the letter i and the letter l.

Many crossword puzzles feature a "theme," meaning a number of entries that share some common element.