Codeword Solver

A codeword (also called a code-cracker) is a grid-based word puzzle where every letter of the alphabet is replaced by a number from 1 to 26. Your job is to figure out which number represents which letter, and fill in the entire grid.

Unlike a crossword, there are no clues. You start with a small set of pre-revealed letter–number pairs and use those as anchor points to decode the rest. Because each number always maps to the same letter throughout the puzzle, every new letter you identify cascades through the grid — and each new word you complete reveals more numbers for other entries.

The solver helps when you have decoded some letters in a word but not all, and you need to find candidates that fit both the known positions and the number-linking rules.

This is the most powerful feature of the solver — and what makes it genuinely useful for codewords rather than just another anagram tool.

In a codeword, if the same number appears twice in a word, those two positions must be the same letter. When you enter a pattern, you can express this constraint using digits. For example:

• 1.1.. — a five-letter word where the first and third letters are the same. Matches: erect, event, …
• 1..1. — the first and fourth letters are the same. Matches: array, taste, …
• 12321 — the first and fifth letters are the same, and the second and fourth letters are a different shared letter (a palindrome-shaped word). Matches: civic, level, madam, …
• 1221. — letters 2 and 3 are the same (a consecutive pair), and letters 1 and 4 are a different shared letter. Matches: teeth, deeds, …

Use a dot . for any unknown letter with no constraint. Use the same digit wherever you know two positions share a letter. The solver enforces both rules simultaneously — you will only see results that satisfy all constraints at once.

Crossword and anagram tools do not handle this. It is the defining reason to use this solver for codewords specifically.

The solver has two modes. Use the right one for the situation you are in.

Single pattern (this page)

Use when you are working on one word in isolation — you have some letters decoded and want to see every candidate that fits. This is the fastest route for most solving steps.

Two patterns together

Use when two crossing or intersecting words share a decoded letter, and you want to find a pair of words that both fit simultaneously. This dramatically narrows the result set in one step — instead of checking all candidates for word A against all candidates for word B manually, the solver finds only the combinations that work.

A good rule of thumb: start with single-pattern for most of the grid. Switch to two-pattern mode when you have narrowed a word to a short list of candidates and want to confirm which one is consistent with a crossing entry.

1. Start with the shortest words. Two- and three-letter words have the fewest candidates. In codewords, short words are often common prepositions and articles — of, the, and, are, is, it — which reveal the most frequent letters quickly.
2. Use letter frequency. The most common letters in English are E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R. The numbers that appear most often across your grid are likely among these. Look at which numbers recur across many words and try assigning E or T to them first.
3. Look for obvious patterns. A three-letter word ending in two identical numbers is almost certainly odd, egg, off, ill, inn, add. A four-letter word with numbers 1,2,2,3 (middle two identical) could be book, food, roof, moon. Recognise these shapes before searching.
4. Cross-check every new letter you find. Every time you decode a letter, immediately find every other word in the grid that contains the same number and check whether those positions still make sense. One bad assumption will create contradictions downstream.
5. Use Exclude letters for eliminations. If you already know certain letters belong to numbers that do not appear in this answer, enter them in the Exclude letters field to cut the candidate list faster.

For a full walkthrough with worked examples, see the instructions page.

• Using dots when you mean a repeated letter. If positions 2 and 5 in a word share the same number in your grid, entering dots for both gives you results where those positions may have different letters. Use the same digit in both positions to enforce the constraint.
• Starting with long words. A seven-letter word with only two known letters can return hundreds of candidates. Start short, decode more letters first, and return to long words once you have more constraints to work with.
• Using Big when Original is sufficient. The Big dictionary includes archaic, technical, and highly specialist words. Most mainstream newspaper and magazine codewords draw from Original vocabulary. Using Big early in a solve creates noise — you see valid but unlikely candidates. Start on Original and only escalate if Original returns nothing useful.
• Ignoring Exclude letters. Once you know some letters cannot belong in a word, entering them in Exclude letters can cut a long candidate list dramatically.

The three tiers reflect search breadth for codeword use — not just general vocabulary difficulty. Choose the one that matches the vocabulary range of the puzzle you are working on.

Pocket

A focused set of common everyday vocabulary. Use this when Original returns too many results and you want to narrow to the most familiar words first. Also appropriate for family and general-audience publications that keep vocabulary accessible. If Pocket returns nothing, the word is almost certainly in Original.

Original

Standard British English covering everyday and moderately specialist vocabulary. The right starting point for most people and most puzzles. Most UK newspaper and magazine codewords are solvable entirely within Original.

Big

Adds rarer, archaic, technical, and specialist entries. Use only when Original returns nothing useful and you believe the puzzle setter has drawn on less common vocabulary — common in specialist publications, themed puzzles, and more challenging broadsheet supplements. Expect a longer results list and more manual filtering.

Definitions. Where a definition is stored for a matched word, it appears alongside the result card. Not every entry has a stored definition, but where one exists it helps you evaluate whether the candidate makes sense in context.

Language coverage. Dictionaries cover British English as the primary standard. Where American English variants are codeword-safe — consistent spelling, unambiguous, appropriate for puzzle use — they are included alongside the British form.

If a word you expect does not appear at any tier, it may not yet be in our dictionary. Use the Submit a Word page to suggest it.

Crossword solvers and anagram tools handle a different problem. Here is how they differ:

• Crossword solvers match a pattern to a dictionary but do not handle the linked-letter constraint. They treat every unknown position as independent. For codewords, this means they return every word that fits the length and known letters — but they will include words where the numbers that should share a letter do not. You have to filter manually.
• Anagram tools rearrange a set of letters. They assume you have all the letters and want to find orderings. In a codeword, you typically do not have all the letters — you have some positional information and some linking constraints. Anagram tools cannot use that information.
• This solver was built specifically for codeword logic. It enforces positional letters, linked repeated positions, and letter exclusions in a single pass — making it much closer to how a real codeword is actually solved. The methodology page explains the matching logic in detail.