The Independent's Codeword

The Independent runs its puzzles site with Arkadium, which hosts the paper's crosswords next to a large library of casual games. Codeword is one of the paper's own daily puzzles. The game's description says new Codewords are added Monday to Saturday.

A codeword looks like a crossword without clues. Every white square holds a number, and each number stands for one letter of the alphabet, so all 26 letters turn up somewhere in the grid. You start with two or three letters given, enter them wherever their numbers appear, and build words outwards from there. The key strip under the grid records which number you have matched to which letter, and the alphabet row greys out the letters already used.

One odd detail: the numbers on the squares are drawn again each time the page loads, so a reload shows the same grid with a different numbering. The words and the given letters do not change, and neither does the leaderboard, which lists the day's solvers by time.

The menu holds a hint, a check, the full solution, a save, a print view and a clear button, and a timer runs above the grid. On a phone the grid fills the width, with zoom buttons and the key below it. The page opens with a video ad of about half a minute before the grid appears, and ad slots sit around the board.

It suits solvers who like logic as much as words, and anyone who finds cryptic clues too much but still wants a full-size newspaper puzzle.