Anniversary crosswords: a present that isn't another photo frame
How to turn your years together into a puzzle that fits inside a card.
The brief for an anniversary present
Personal, not expensive, and not something you have already given. That rules out most of the shop, which is how couples end up with a shelf of frames and a drawer of engraved things.
A crossword about the two of you meets the brief exactly. It costs nothing, it is unmistakably specific to you, and it takes about the same time as choosing a card badly.
What to put in it
First flat, the street, the restaurant you keep going back to, the wedding song, the holiday where everything went wrong, the in-joke that has outlasted the friends who started it, the traditional gift material for the year — paper, tin, silver, gold.
Twelve answers is enough. Print it, fold it into the card, and keep the answer sheet in your pocket for the inevitable dispute.
How to make your own in about five minutes
Open the builder, type in twelve to twenty answers — single words work best, and names are fine — then write a short clue for each one. If a clue is not coming, the clue helper will suggest one you can edit rather than accept wholesale, which is usually the faster route.
The grid arranges itself around your words, and you can reshuffle the layout until the shape suits. Publishing gives you a link to send and a print view with the blank grid, the clue list and a separate answer sheet on A4. Nobody you send it to needs an account to solve it.
Printing it for a room full of people
Every puzzle on the site has a print view laid out for A4: an empty grid, the clues in two columns, and the answers on their own page so you can keep them back. Printing one copy per person and one answer sheet for whoever is running things is usually the right split.
If you would rather not print, the link works on any phone browser and keeps each person's progress separately, so a table can race without sharing a screen.