The Differences Between US And UK Crossword Grids
It starts very much with the grid. With US style puzzles, every square in the grid is fully checked, meaning that each white square is in both an across AND down run. In a British style grid, this is far from the case, and generally it will be the case that every other letter is checked. This means multiple solutions are more likely and thinking of a word that fits may be harder as there are less checking letters available.
US grids - as a result of the above - pack a load more clues in each puzzle. A typical 15x15 grid in the UK, for instance, might have a number of clues in the low 30s, whilst in the US the same grid would have almost double the number of clues.
Filling a US grid is clearly harder than a British style grid, where the fact many less squares are crossed means that it is easier to achieve a grid fill as there are more options available for each word.
As well as the above differences, the clues lengths usually aren't stated with US puzzles. If the answer is composed of multiple words, this also isn't given.
Whereas in the UK there are various different style of puzzles: the quick, the general knowledge, the cryptic and the (heavily) themed, in the US you just get one standard type of puzzle, which may be lightly themed (by UK standards) with just a few themed entries, usually the longest horizontal answers in the grid.
The reason for this is that the rigidity of the grid style and the difficulty filling it makes it a lot more harder to create a heavily themed puzzle or indeed a puzzle where every answer can be the answer to a general knowledge clue.
Because the US style of grid gives you two chances to get each word, then the clues can be a lot vaguer, in the way that with a UK puzzle this generally wouldn't be possible. Also, due to the harder nature of achieving a good gridfill, you will tend to get more abbreviations and obscure words in US puzzles - particularly to fill three and four-letter word slots. US puzzles can be quite impenetrable to a foreign audience as they may well include references to baseball and basketball players that no-one else would have a clue about, as well as small towns / cities, references to abbreviations for relatively unknown organisations and so forth that will be unknown to a generalist audience. This generally isn't the case with British puzzles.
People who grow up playing US puzzles probably end up preferring them to the UK style, and vice versa. However some people do learn to love the other type. If you've played both, which do you prefer, and why? What do you consider the strengths and weaknesses of each style?
Date written: 27 Apr 2015
Comment on this post
You must be logged in to comment - please Register or Login
All About Word Ladder Puzzles
The word ladder puzzle comes in two main versions.
The first version of the puzzle lists clues alongside it, whilst the second version is open-ended with no clues alongside each rung of the ladder, and therefore is both more difficult to solve and may...
Added: 16 Mar 2015
Welcome To Wordy Puzzle
Welcome to our brand new site, Wordy Puzzle. As the name suggests, this site will be all about word puzzles. If you love words and puzzles, then we hope you'll also love Wordy Puzzle.
We're launching the site with a large range of different word...
Added: 13 Mar 2015
Obscure Words In Cryptic Crosswords
As a general rule, quick crosswords tend to have words in them that are fairly common. It is rare to have a quick crossword that uses more than one word you won't have heard of, and in most cases you will know all words in this genre of crossword...
Added: 29 Mar 2015
General Knowledge Solving Tips
Solving general knowledge puzzles, surprisingly enough, requires a considerable amount of general knowledge. So far, so obvious. But how do you go about getting the knowledge that you require to solve a general knowledge crossword?
Well there are...
Added: 20 Mar 2015
What Makes A Valid US Style Crossword Grid?
All the puzzles on Wordy Puzzle, at the time of writing, use the British style of crossword grid and also spelling. Here we look at what the US style of crossword grid is like.
With US grids, every white square in the grid is checked. The term...
Added: 01 May 2015
Back to Puzzle Blog