Crosshare Daily Mini

Crosshare is a free, ad-free and open-source site for making, sharing and solving crosswords. Its daily hook is the Daily Mini: each day one small grid, usually five by five, is chosen as the day's puzzle for everyone, credited to the Crosshare member who built it and often with a short note from them.

You solve it in the browser: click a square to start, type letters, and switch between across and down as you work through the clues. The grid checks itself when you fill it, and because the puzzles come from a community of constructors rather than one editor, the style and difficulty vary from day to day. The site also shows a throwback mini from an earlier year next to the current one.

Beyond the Daily Mini, Crosshare is a whole platform: anyone can build a crossword with its constructor, upload a .puz or .ipuz file, and share a link, and the home page features puzzles of many sizes made by other users. Every past Daily Mini is kept in a month-by-month archive. The project is open-source and runs on donations rather than ads.

It suits solvers who want a quick daily mini with a personal, varied feel, and constructors who want a place to publish their own puzzles for others to play.