My attention has been drawn to a new site that may be of interest to some of you. It provides a location where amateur setters can compile and host their own crosswords.
The site is called MyCrossword and can be found here. To quote from the ‘About’ page, “With MyCrossword, you can solve, comment, and vote on others’ crosswords from anywhere or fill a grid and write clues of your own”.
Big thank you to Fifteensquared for the announcement. My hope is that the site may encourage other aspiring setters, like myself, to have a crack at writing their very own crossword. If anyone has any questions or suggestions about MyCrossword, please feel free to get in touch via Twitter: @RaiderCrossword or the site’s contact page.
Thanks,
Tom (aka Raider)
Great idea. I’ve already sent the link on to a couple of noobs.
Good luck with it Tom.
What an excellent idea.
Not least because their site is very user-friendly for the solver (would the Independent care to recruit you to redesign their site?) – I haven’t yet tried setting.
Fabulous site – have already had fun with the crosswords up there.
Couple of comments sent by email; can we use our own grids and can we upload from Crossword Compiler?
Thank you again!
Thank you for the announcement and link.
I only look up Fifteensquared when the Guardian clues either make no sense to me, or cannot be justified. And then, usually, I find that the clues I could not solve are either obscure, or just badly clued.
Another site I visit, for breakfast crosswords and chess problems is simplydailypuzzles.com .
Thank you again Tom Raider.
I am pleased to report that the crosswords print off very well, indeed, from Firefox at least.
Which setting programme and format do you use?
I just wanted to say thanks to all who have signed up for the site – the response has been phenomenal. I’m really looking forward to seeing the content created from the new users.
I thought I would just use this moment to address a few questions that have cropped up.
Where is my verification email?
In a small number of cases we have found that verification emails have been either been quarantined or gone into a spam folder. However, if that’s not the case or you’re still unsure then please feel free to get in touch and I can offer some assistance.
I can’t find any help pages, am I missing something?
There aren’t any in the site at the moment but I’m hoping to add one for the Edit Crossword page soon.
Can I import my own puzzles from Crossword Compiler?
Unfortunately not but this is likely to change in the future. There are also plans to expand the number of pre-defined grids available as well as adding some supporting features i.e. sorting, filtering, and so on.
How has the site been built?
I am a software developer by day, so that has allowed me to build the site by hand. It’s predominantly been constructed using a framework called React as well as other bits and pieces. @Highlander asked a question about how the print formatting was achieved. To be honest, it was just me applying the settings manually using something called CSS, which meant hiding and moving elements on the page until they looked good. The site didn’t even have a print capability until a few days ago when @Gaufrid pointed out that it was missing – another example of some invaluable feedback.
As ever, any question or suggestions then just shout.
Thanks,
Tom