Crossword (The Indian Express)

About Crossword (The Indian Express)

The crossword on The Indian Express's Puzzles and Games pages is the Eugene Sheffer Crossword, a long-running syndicated puzzle that many newspapers print. Each one is dated and filed under its own address (ie-sheffer-20261006 for 6 October 2026), and the player names it as the Eugene Sheffer Crossword under the grid.

The grid is 13 squares by 13 in the American style, with every letter checked by an across and a down answer. Clues are straight definitions, fill-in-the-blanks and light general knowledge ("Handful of hair", "Havana's land", "-- gobi (Indian vegetarian dish)", "Aladdin monkey"), with a mild American flavour in its names and abbreviations. A puzzle appears Monday to Saturday; there is none on Sunday.

It plays in the PuzzleMe player with a timer, an Assist menu to check or reveal a square, a word or the grid, and a print option. The page also lists the previous two weeks of puzzles to catch up on, beside the paper's daily mini crossword and sudoku. All of them are part of Express Premium: without a subscription the page shows a padlock and a Subscribe for full access prompt.

The same Sheffer puzzle runs elsewhere, so a solver who already has it from another paper gets nothing new here; for Indian Express subscribers it is a steady weekday crossword of moderate difficulty, harder than the mini and easier than a cryptic.

How to play Crossword (The Indian Express)

1. Open Crosswords on The Indian Express and sign in with an Express Premium subscription.
2. Choose today's dated puzzle, or an earlier day from the list beside it.
3. Click a square or a clue; the clue bar shows the answer you are filling, across or down.
4. Type answers from the clues, using crossing letters for the harder ones.
5. Fill the whole 13x13 grid to finish; Assist checks or reveals a square, word or the grid if you are stuck.

Tips

• Fill-in-the-blank clues are usually the quickest way in: start there and work off their letters.
• Expect American names, sports and abbreviations: the Sheffer is a syndicated US puzzle.
• There is no Sunday puzzle, so Monday's page lists Saturday as the day before.

Questions