How I Built Crossword.by: A Multilingual Crossword Platform

Introduction

For many years I enjoyed solving crossword puzzles, but I noticed that most online crossword websites had one or more limitations. Some only supported one language, others required registration, and very few allowed users to generate their own crossword puzzles.

That inspired me to build Crossword.by — a free multilingual platform where anyone can solve, create and print crossword puzzles directly in a web browser.

[embed]Online сrosswords - solve sudoku and puzzles | Crossword.by Solve crosswords, sudoku, and logic puzzles every day. Thousands of tasks of varying difficulty to train your mind and…crossword.by

Why I Started This Project

When I began working on Crossword.by, I wanted to solve several problems:

• create crosswords automatically from a list of words;
• support multiple languages;
• make the website fast on both desktop and mobile devices;
• allow users to print puzzles as PDF documents;
• keep everything free to use.

Features

Today the platform includes:

• ✔ Online crossword solving
• ✔ Crossword generator
• ✔ Sudoku
• ✔ Printable PDF crosswords
• ✔ Word export
• ✔ PNG export
• ✔ Multiple crossword grid sizes
• ✔ Six interface languages

Technical Challenges

One of the most difficult tasks was creating an algorithm that automatically places words into a crossword grid while maximizing intersections.

Another challenge was supporting different alphabets:

• English
• German
• French
• Spanish
• Russian
• Ukrainian

Every language has different word lengths and character frequencies, making crossword generation more complex.

Performance

The platform is optimized for speed:

• lightweight interface;
• responsive design;
• server-side crossword generation;
• optimized image previews;
• search engine friendly pages.