Crosswords gained their enormous popularity as an adult pastime in America after the publication of Arthur Wynne's puzzle and from there the craze spread to other countries. The puzzles have been published in almost every country and language, even Latin. As the crossword has become more popular it has evolved into many different forms. There are standard grids, irregular grids, cryptic puzzles and crosswords based on themes such as geography or sport.

Many crossword enthusiasts find there is usually always at least one clue that cannot be solved using your existing knowledge, a dictionary, an encyclopedia, or a specialist crossword dictionary. This is why the Library sees many crossword puzzlers pouring through texts in our Reference section to find those elusive answers.

Nowadays, of course, the Internet provides another avenue for ferreting out those hard to find answers. Many sites have sprung up to help puzzlers complete their crosswords. Some are free and some require subscription. (Of course there are also many sites out in Cyberspace where you can complete crosswords online. But that is another story). We will concentrate on sites offering crossword help at no cost.

My favourite crossword solving sites are One Across and Google. One Across is a site that allows you to type in your clue and the letters you know and then comes up with a list of possible answers. If I cannot find an answer using One Across, or if I wish to corroborate an answer it has given me, then I tend to use the Google search engine. Typing in appropriate keywords from the clue, plus the possible answer, will usually help to confirm an answer, dismiss an answer, or suggest alternatives.

The Crossword Buddy allows you to type in the letters you have and then choose to search for those letters in the whole word, at the beginning or end of the word, or in the middle of the word.

The Jumble and Crossword Solver allows you to search for words by typing in the letters you already know. As it is a jumble (or scrambled word) solver as well, be sure to choose the 'crossword puzzle' option before clicking on "Solve It". The database contains over 300,000 words.

Other sites to try include: A 2 Z Word Finder, All Words, and Online Crossword Solver.

I would like to say a big thank you to the patron who dropped in a list of helpful crossword sites.