Bridal shower crosswords: a game for three generations at once
Why the crossword is the shower game that grandmothers and flatmates can both play.
A game with a wide age range
Bridal showers gather an unusual spread of people: the bride's friends, her mother's friends, aunts, a small child under the table. Most shower games are pitched at one of those groups and quietly exclude the rest.
A crossword is generational common ground. It is a format everybody has met, it can be done sitting down with a cup of tea, and it runs happily in the background while presents are opened.
What goes in the grid
Wedding-run-up vocabulary works well as a base — the dress, the venue, the flowers, the traditions — and then a handful of bride-specific answers give the room something to argue about: the honeymoon, the first dance, where he proposed.
If you are collecting answers from the guests beforehand, ask for one word each. It is a much easier request than a written memory, and the replies arrive the same day.
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.