Print Joey

Literacy

Mini crossword maker

Mini crossword settings

5 to 8 answers — a mini crossword is short on purpose. 8 of 8 answers. The clue is optional — leave the pipe off and the letter count is used instead. Answers print in uppercase; spaces and punctuation are removed.

Options

Live worksheet preview
1 / 2
100%
CrosswordName: 12345678Across3. A pet that barks and wags its tail4. A big animal you can ride6. The biggest land animal, with a long trunk8. A pet that purrsDown1. It swings in trees and loves bananas2. A woolly farm animal5. A hopping animal with long ears7. A big cat with orange and black stripesCreated with Print Joey — printjoey.com
Page 1 of 2
Answer keyMSDOGHORSENEKERELEPHANTYBIBGIECATR12345678Created with Print Joey — printjoey.com
Page 2 of 2 — answer key

Quick guide

How it works

Make a short printable crossword from your own words. Type between five and eight answers, one a line with the clue after a pipe, and the generator interlocks them into a compact numbered grid with the clues underneath. The squares are large by default, because a small grid has the page to spare. Download the result as an A4 or US Letter PDF with an answer key.

Type five to eight words and clues, preview the grid instantly, then download the PDF — no account needed.

  1. Start from a ready-made set, or type five to eight answers one per line as “word | clue”.

  2. Choose the square size, the letter case and whether to print the word bank and the first-letter hints.

  3. Download the PDF with its answer key, or copy a share link that restores these settings.

Teaching tip

Using these worksheets in teaching

A short crossword is a different exercise from a long one, not a smaller version of the same one. With five to eight answers a solver can hold the whole grid in mind at once, so the crossings do real work: an answer half-remembered is settled by the two letters already written through it, and the puzzle finishes rather than stalls. That makes it the right shape for a starter or a warm-up, where a sheet that cannot be finished in the time is worse than no sheet. Keep the words on one theme — the week’s topic, the book being read — and the clues short; a mini crossword whose clues take longer to read than the grid takes to fill has lost the point of being small.

Frequently asked questions

  • How is this different from the crossword maker?

    It is the same maker with a shorter list and bigger squares. The crossword maker takes up to twenty answers and sets them in a compact grid; this one takes five to eight and gives them the whole page, which is what makes it a five-minute puzzle rather than a twenty-minute one. If you want more than eight answers, use the crossword maker — this page will tell you how many lines to remove rather than quietly dropping them.

  • Why five to eight?

    Below five there is not enough crossing for the grid to hold together — three words that share few letters often produce a grid that is really three separate words. Above eight the squares have to shrink to fit, and a sheet with small squares and eight clues is the classic crossword, which already has a page.

  • What is a mini crossword good for?

    The gaps a full puzzle does not fit: a starter, a fast finisher, a homework margin, a warm-up on a lesson’s theme. Because it is short it can be solved in one sitting and marked at a glance, which is the difference between a puzzle that gets used weekly and one that gets used once a term.

  • Do I have to write clues?

    No. Leave the pipe off a line and the letter count is printed in its place, so a list can be typed first and clued later. With the word bank switched on, letter counts alone already make a solvable puzzle.

  • Why does it say a word could not be fitted?

    Every word after the first has to cross one already on the grid, sharing a letter in a position that is still free — and with only five to eight words there are fewer chances for that to happen than on a full sheet. Add a word that shares a letter with the rest, or press regenerate to try a different arrangement; the puzzle without it still prints and is still valid.

  • Is there an answer key?

    Yes. The completed grid prints on a second page of the same PDF, so you can mark the sheet without solving it yourself.

Related tools

Last reviewed: July 2026. Worksheet content is generated by deterministic algorithms and covered by automated correctness tests — no AI-generated answers.