Home

genxword is a crossword generator written in Python

It creates a crossword from a list of words and clues, or just words, in a text file, and it outputs a crossword with clues in pdf format, and / or the crossword in png / svg format together with a text file containing the word bank and clues.

How to format the word list file

Some examples of how to use genxword

• genxword word_list.txt n

The above command uses the word_list.txt file to produce png versions of the empty grid and the key and a text file containing the word bank and clues.

• genxword -n 40 very_big_word_list.txt p

This command uses the very_big_word_list.txt file to produce A4-sized pdf versions of the empty grid with the clues and the key with the clues. The '-n' option allows you to decide how many words are used from your 'very big word list' file, which can be several thousand words long. The default number is 50.

• genxword -a -o "Monty" python_words ls

In this case, the '-a' option means that genxword is being run non-interactively, and the '-o' option sets the name of the crossword, which in this case is 'Monty'. It is using the 'python_words' word list file, and it will produce letter-sized pdf versions of the empty grid and key, with clues, and svg versions of the empty grid and key, together with a text file containing the word bank and clues.

In all of the examples above, the files are saved in the user's current working directory.

For more information about all the options available, please consult the man page.