Tutorial: How to create a Crossword game – Easypromos - Online Helpdesk

Create an online crossword puzzle to entertain your audience and increase retention time on your website or blog. You can decide the number of words that users must find and use Artificial Intelligence to easily generate the definition of each word. You can define the maximum time the players will get to complete the crossword (up to 45 minutes) and even give points for each correct word along with a bonus for finishing the crossword.

This tutorial is organized as follows:

1. Presentation of the game

With the "Crossword" application you can offer an entertaining time and fun while they guess the hidden words on the game board. You can decide how much time they have to complete the crossword puzzle, and if how many points players receive for each correct word found. In this tutorial we present the steps that will allow you to configure the Crossword game, which includes the following characteristics:

Upload your own words along with their definitions, and the system will automatically create the grid with the game.
You can create the Crossword with the help of AI: the Artificial Intelligence tools integrated into the game will allow you to create a crossword in a few minutes and without effort. Enter a topic and the AI will provide you with suggested words and clues. Choose the ones you like and the tool will place them on the board in crossword format.
Limit the time the user gets to find the words (from 5 to 45 minutes).
Select the level of difficulty of the game and help offered to the player: you can define the maximum time to solve the crossword puzzle and the number of words to discover to determine the level of difficulty. On the other hand, you can help the user by presenting uncovered letters from the beginning of the game, showing some words or indicating if the letters are correct.
Multiple options to reward participants: you can assign the prize(s) to the participants with the highest score(s), hold a raffle among the participants who received at least X points, raffle a prize among all participants, etc.

2. What is the user participation flow like?

What will the user engagement experience be like? The promotion is made up of different pages that the user will navigate through when interacting with the promotion to participate, such as: the initial welcome page, the login and entry form pages, where the user will register with their data, the game page itself, etc. As a whole, the different pages will make up the structure of the promotion and the flow of participation that the user will follow to complete the promotional mechanics of the promotion.

Additionally, as the promotion administrator you will be able to select which participation flow you want users to follow. Specifically, there are three different possible participation flows:

Identified Mode, where the user must identify themselves and register before being able to play.
Visitor Mode, where the user plays first and then identifies and registers.
Anonymous Mode, where the user participates without identifying or registering.

The choice of one modality or another will determine how the user's participation and experience in the promotion will be.

Learn in this article how each participation flow works, and discover more about the different pages that make up a promotion.

3. Create the promotion

To create your Crossword game, first create the promotion from your dashboard.

In the following tutorial, you will see the first steps to create your promotion so that you do not miss any important point. The tutorial presents the main management options that are available to you to manage and edit the promotion:

Enter here to discover the first steps to create your promotion.

4. Configure the Crossword

Below we explain all the steps to create the Crossword.

Information to keep in mind before starting

Before starting with the configuration the game, please keep in mind that:

1. The system will automatically generate the crossword puzzle from the words you enter.

2. You must insert at least 4 words.

3. Words must be a minimum of 3 characters, and a maximum of 15 characters.

4. Compound words or words with spaces are accepted. They will appear on the board separated by a dash.

5. Only letters from the Latin alphabet are accepted.

6. Accents, numbers or special characters are not accepted. "Ñ" and "Ç" characters are accepted, however.

7. All words in the crossword must have a space between them. Adjacent words are not accepted.

8. When you add a new word, the system will try to add it without recalculating the entire board. That is, it will try to place it within the current word distribution. If it cannot place it, it will try to recalculate the entire board again. If the new board cannot be generated, the new word(s) will not be added, and the game will be revert to the previous version.

9. You can add initial uncovered letters to make the crossword easier. It is not possible to indicate which letters are to be uncovered from the beginning of the game.

10. You can lock the crossword puzzle, to not allow more words to be added. It will help you prevent the game from being modified, when you have already activated the promotion and have players.

11. You can define if you want to show in real time whether the letters entered by the user are correct or not.

12. You can configure whether users can use the wildcard to solve a word. The number of help and words that users can discover if they are stuck is customizable.

13. The board game is composed of a grid of minimum of 12x12 and a maximum of 17x17 depending on the number of words. This value cannot be customized.

14. You can enter words individually, in bulk from a file, or through artificial intelligence.

15. You will be able to create clues and definition quickly with the help of artificial intelligence.

16. All crossword colors are customizable.

17. You can give points for each correct word and bonus points if the user completes the whole game correctly.

18. You can define the length of the game: between 5 and 45 minutes.

19. The user will have the option to surrender. In this case, they receive 0 points and one participation will be deducted.

Step 1. Create the words

To begin configuring the game, enter the Editor of the promotion > Pages: Participation. Click the "edit" button there to start configuring the game.

You will find the customization options of the game under the "Crossword" tab, where the first step will be to create the words of the game.

By default, you will have 20 words already created (they are general knowledge words), so you can have an idea of the type of words you can create. You can use the "Try the game" tab to test the user experience when playing:

From here, you can decide if you want to use the words that are configured by default or delete them all and create your own words.

To create new words, there are three method available:

1. Simple: allows you to add the words manually. It will allow you to enter the different words, one by one, along with the clues users will read to try and discover the words.

Recommendation: use the AI generator to create the clue for each word, to save some time while preparing the game.

See how to generate the clues via AI here:

2. Add words in bulk: the editor incorporates a tool to upload words in batch, from a file. This way, you can comfortably work on the words and their definitions in a spreadsheet file and then import all the words at once with a simple copy/paste, and the system will automatically generate the Crossword.

3. [RECOMMENDED OPTION] With Artificial Intelligence: you can create words and their clues indicating the specific topic of your promotion, using the Artificial Intelligence word generator.

To do this, you will be requested to enter the topic of the words and the number of words you need to generate. The word generator will create them along with their definitions/clues:

After generating the words, a window will open where you can see the words that have been generated, and you can decide if you want to add them all to the Crossword, or leave out some of them. After adding them to the game you can edit them, or even add more words:

In the following short video, you can see the whole process of Words creation with AI. The crossword game will automatically be updated with the created words.

Once the words of the game have been added, you will find the following two configuration options:

Number of letters revealed: allows you to configure the number of letters that will appear revealed from the beginning, when the user accesses the game.
Lock the crossword: you can lock the crossword to prevent further changes and prevent edits that could impact on the users experience while the promotion is live. This is a recommended security measure once you have the final crossword puzzle

Step 2. Gameplay settings

Once all the words and their definitions have been added, the next step is to customize the difficulty level and design of the game. To do this, enter the "Gameplay Settings" tab, where you will find the following configuration options.

1. Basic gameplay options

First, you can configure the following options:

Game Time: allows you to set the maximum time you want to give users to complete the game (Min: 5 and max: 45 minutes).
Extra points for solving the crossword puzzle: by default, the user earns 10 points for each correct word. In addition, they also receive an additional 100 bonus points if they find all the words of the puzzle. This option allows you to edit and customize the number of bonus points users will receive if they complete the entire crossword.

2. Help the player

In this section you can configure if you want to offer help to the player, such as:

Allow users to discover words: this option allows the user to discover some words completely, that is, have the system complete the word for them. You can decide the number of words that the user can discover, to avoid having users abandon the game because they are stuck.

Show correct/incorrect letters: this option helps the player by indicating them whether letters they have typed are correct or incorrect. Note: If this option is activated, the user will not be able to confirm and send the crossword puzzle if it has errors, only if they have guessed all the words correctly.

3. Set board colors

In this section, you can customize the main colors of the board through these three options:

Board background color.
Background color of the letters.
Letter color.

4. Set the color of selected word

In this section, you can customize the color of the word that the user is trying to discover, through these two options:

Background color of the letters.
Letter color.

Step 3. Instructions Screen

Under the "Instructions" tab, you can customize the screen that appears before accessing the board game and starting to play, where you can present a summary of how the game works, to inform players on how the game works before accessing it.

By default, the page features text that you can customize to encourage users to start participating, along with a "Go/Begin" button that you can also customize. Additionally, you can upload an image to complete the page.

Step 4. Score Screen

Under the "Score screen" tab you can customize the colors and texts that will be displayed on the screen that the user will access after completing the crossword puzzle, to show a summary of their game to the players, with the score achieved.

In this way, you can customize the screen that the user will see after playing, to show a different message depending on their result in the game:

OK Game: the screen that the user will see if they have discovered all the words of the crossword puzzle in the established time.
KO Game - Out of Time: this is the screen that the user will see if they have not solved all the words of the crossword puzzle and ran out of time.
KO Game - Incomplete: this is the screen that the users will see in two cases:
- 1. If they clicked the "I give up" button, which allows the user to quit the game without finishing and having found all the words. Note: The user will only be able to click "I give up" once at least 10 minutes have passed since the game has started.
- 2. In case they clicked on the "Submit" button but had included some error in the crossword they sent. Note: The user will only be able to click "Submit" if they have completed all the words of the game. Furthermore, if the "Show correct/incorrect letters" option is activated, the user will only be able to send the crossword puzzle if they have guessed all the words correctly; if the crossword puzzle has errors, they will not be able to send it.

Additionally, you can hide the score that the user has achieved after doing the crossword puzzle, for instance if you do not want users to compete with one another or of the score obtained is irrelevant:

5. Customize the design and finish the setting

Once you have configured the crossword, the next step is to finish the configuration of the other options and pages of the promotion: customize the design template with your own colors and texts, add the legal texts, the viral content, etc.

Check out the tutorial to finish the configuration and customization of your promotion.

6. Points management and publication of winners

The scoring system in the Crossword Puzzle works as follows:

The system will assign 10 points to the player for each correct word typed without mistake.
In addition, by default users will receive a bonus of 100 points for completing the entire crossword puzzle. You can change the number of additional points you want to give to the players who have completed the whole crossword, from the Promotion Editor, under the "Gameplay settings" tab.

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