page_title: Crossword
section_title: Grid design, clues, and conventions
hierarchical_section_title: Crossword / Non-English languages / Grid design, clues, and conventions
caption_attribution_description: English: This is an image showing a Bengali crossword grid.
context_page_description: A crossword is a word puzzle and word search game that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The game's goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues, which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right and from top to bottom. The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
context_section_description: French-language crosswords are smaller than English-language ones, and not necessarily square: there are usually 8–13 rows and columns, totaling 81–130 squares.  They need not be symmetric and two-letter words are allowed, unlike in most English-language puzzles.  Compilers strive to minimize use of shaded squares.  A black-square usage of 10% is typical; Georges Perec compiled many 9×9 grids for Le Point with four or even three black squares.  Rather than numbering the individual clues, the rows and columns are numbered as on a chessboard.  All clues for a given row or column are listed, against its number, as separate sentences.  This is similar to the notation used in the aforementioned Daily Mail Blankout puzzles.
  In Italy, crosswords are usually oblong and larger than French ones, 13×21 being a common size. As in France, they usually are not symmetrical; two-letter words are allowed; and the number of shaded squares is minimized. Nouns (including surnames) and the infinitive or past participle of verbs are allowed, as are abbreviations; in larger crosswords, it is customary to put at the center of the grid phrases made of two to four words, or forenames and surnames. A variant of Italian crosswords does not use shaded squares: words are delimited by thickening the grid. Another variant starts with a blank grid: the solver must insert both the answers and the shaded squares, and Across and Down clues are either ordered by row and column or not ordered at all.
  Modern Hebrew is normally written with only the consonants; vowels are either understood, or entered as diacritical marks. This can lead to ambiguities in the entry of some words, and compilers generally specify that answers are to be entered in ktiv male (with some vowels) or ktiv haser (without vowels). Further, since Hebrew is written from right to left, but Roman numerals are used and written from left to right, there can be an ambiguity in the description of lengths of entries, particularly for multi-word phrases. Different compilers and publications use differing conventions for both of these issues.
  In the Japanese language crossword; because of the writing system, one syllable (typically katakana) is entered into each white cell of the grid rather than one letter, resulting in the typical solving grid seeming small in comparison to those of other languages.  Any second Yōon character is treated as a full syllable and is rarely written with a smaller character. Even cipher crosswords have a Japanese equivalent, although pangrammaticity does not apply. Crosswords with kanji to fill in are also produced, but in far smaller number as it takes far more effort to construct one. Despite Japanese having three writing forms, hiragana, katakana and kanji, they are rarely mixed in a single crossword puzzle.
  A. N. Prahlada Rao, based in Bangalore, has composed/ constructed some 35,000 crossword puzzles in the language Kannada, including 7,500 crosswords based on films made in Kannada, with a total of 10,00,000 (ten lakhs, or one million) clues. His name has recorded in LIMCA BOOK OF RECORDS – 2015 for creating highest crosswords in the Indian Regional Languages. His name has continued in the LIMCA BOOK OF RECORDS – 2016 and 2017 also. A five volume set of his puzzles was released in February 2008 In 2013 two more crossword books released. In 2017 his 5 Crossword Books published. Bengali is also well known for its crossword puzzles. Crosswords are published regularly in almost all the Bengali dailies and periodicals. The grid system is quite similar to the British style and two-letter words are usually not allowed.
  In Poland, crosswords typically use British-style grids, but some do not have shaded cells. Shaded cells are often replaced by boxes with clues—such crosswords are called Swedish puzzles or Swedish-style crosswords. In a vast majority of Polish crosswords, nouns are the only allowed words.
  Swedish crosswords are mainly in the illustrated (photos or drawings), in-line clue style typical of the "Swedish-style grid" mentioned above. This tradition prospered a
caption: A Bengali crossword grid
exif: {}