If you are looking to test your friends and family on their crossword knowledge and think you have the perfect combination of difficult clues, words and anagrams to make the steam erupt from their ears, then your only problem may be how to make your own crossword puzzle. Even if you have all of the content ready, making the actual crossword is a difficult task and very time consuming. That is where an online crossword puzzle maker comes in handy. Usually, these work by you simply entering in the words in one column and their corresponding clues in the next column. Then you can sit back and let the website sort it all out for you without worrying about how to make your own crossword puzzle.

The best thing about using an online crossword puzzle website is that it’s clean, quick and easy. There is no time spent drawing grids, shading in or rubbing out areas. The online crossword puzzle website will take care of all that for you. In addition to this, you can either direct your friends to the website link created for your crossword puzzle or print off a copy of the puzzle you made as many times as you like to hand out to friends and family. It’s also a quick and easy way to make competitions for local magazines, newspapers, school media and more. It’s no longer a case of how to make your own crossword puzzle; you just think up the clues and words and let the crossword puzzle website create it for you.

It’s coming! At the end of next month! ACPT weekend is a good time for anyone who likes puzzles, unless they freak out in crowds. Me, I find the crowds of word nerds invigorating, so I love going. (Memo to Seth G: You gotta go. You’ll love it!)

The program and registration info are here. The first thing to do is to book your travel. That link includes the group code you’ll need to reserve your Brooklyn Bridge Marriott room (scroll down to the Accommodations section). If you’re flying in to Brooklyn, buy your tickets now—airfares go up and up, they don’t come down.

Will Shortz tends to tap one or two new-to-the-ACPT constructors each year, filling the other slots with tried-and-true constructing veterans. The marquee puzzle is the themeless one used in the A, B, and C divisional finals. Themelesses are my favorite puzzles in general, so I really wish I could play in the A finals every year and get to solve that puzzle competitively. You know what? That puzzle has been conquered by women finalists, but I don’t think the finals puzzle has ever been constructed by a woman. I love Karen Tracey’s themeless puzzles and am grateful that she’s so prolific. It’s been too long since Sherry Blackard had one of her killer NYT Saturdays, so I’d love to see one of her beastly grids in the finals. Then there’s Paula Gamache, who is equally good at making themeless puzzles and easy themed ones—not a common combination. Will we see one of their puzzles gracing the finals this year? That will be a closely guarded secret until the tournament weekend. In any event, all eight puzzles are likely to be terrific and fun (though I hope Puzzle #5 will be wickedly challenging, because that’s its own kind of fun).

For printing please click on the crossword puzzle you want to print .

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Warning: potentially uninteresting for individuals who dislike the daily challenge of the local rag’s crossword… but for those, who rack their brains hoping to become more cryptically-minded need not worry because here’s Hector to help you get started in decoding words in the world of cryptic.