Crossword Heaven

A collection, not a single daily

People who type crossword heaven are usually looking for a place that gathers many puzzles: newspaper crosswords and other daily grids, playable in the browser. That is a different product from a paper that publishes one puzzle a day, and different again from a small original set like Folio.

A collection site is useful when you already know which puzzle you want and you want the interface. It is less useful when you are learning how clues work, because the volume hides the lesson. One grid, finished slowly, teaches more than ten grids revealed from an answer list.

Folio keeps the list short on purpose: three 5 by 5 minis, two 7 by 7 dailies, and one 9 by 9 Sunday. Each has a title (Harbor, Lantern, Margin, Weekday, Folio, Broadsheet), an author credit, and a printable empty grid. You will run out of new diagrams. That is the trade for knowing every clue was written for these words.

How to choose a grid

If you want the feeling of Crossword Heaven's variety, rotate the three sizes here instead of expecting hundreds of dates. Mini for a few minutes, daily when you want more crossings, Sunday when you want the longest clue list on the site. The archive page links every puzzle to its board and its print view.

Browser puzzles should keep your letters if you leave. Ours do, in local storage on your device. Clearing the grid from the toolbar wipes that save and resets the clock. It does not create a new puzzle. The diagram stays the one in the archive.

If a collection site also prints answers, treat those pages as spoilers for someone else's work. Use them after a fair attempt. On Folio, spoilers are the Reveal buttons, and they only know our key.

What a short archive is for

Crossword Heaven, and the query crossword puzzles heaven, points at a third-party site that gathers many browser puzzles in one place. Solvers use it when they want volume: several newspapers, several dates, one player. That is a reasonable product. It is a different product from a paper that commissions one puzzle a day, and different again from Folio, which publishes six original diagrams and stops.

Volume hides weak habits. If the next puzzle is always one click away, it is easy to reveal a corner and move on. A short list makes you finish. Harbor, Lantern, and Margin are all 5 by 5, and two of them share some entries because a fully crossed 5 by 5 with a small word list repeats common five-letter words. The grids are not the same pattern of blocks filled the same way. Weekday and the daily titled Folio are both 7 by 7 chamber grids with different words. Broadsheet is the only 9 by 9.

Each puzzle has a play URL and a print URL. The print URL is safe to hand to someone who should not see the key: the HTML contains blocks, numbers, and clues, not the solution letters. The play URL includes the key inside the page so Check and Reveal can run without a second request. Do not treat the play page as a printable answer sheet. If you need paper, use the printable route and write in the squares yourself.

Saved games stay in local storage on the device that played them. They do not follow you to another browser. The color theme is a separate key, folio-theme, and it is applied before the page paints so the grid does not flash from light to dark. If you want the collection-site feeling of a new grid tomorrow, the home page already changes the mini when the New York date changes, cycling Harbor, Lantern, and Margin. The other three puzzles stay put in the archive until you open them.

Crossword Heaven remains useful if you want dozens of dates from newspapers you already read. Use it for those puzzles, and use the paper when the collection is only a convenience. Use this site when you want to know the author wrote the clue for the word in the grid, and when you want a printable sheet that cannot leak the fill. The two can sit in the same bookmark list. They are not the same library.

Crossword puzzles heaven is a request for many puzzles in one place. How to solve a crossword is a request for the method, and that method has its own page. The mini, daily, and Sunday pages are the boards. The home page is today's 5 by 5. Each guide links to those boards, and the boards link back to the guides.