Christmas crosswords: the family quiz that survives the afternoon
A Christmas game that works with the television on and half the room asleep.
Christmas afternoon, realistically
By four o'clock on Christmas Day the room has divided into people who want a game and people who want to sit very still. A quiz with teams and a scorer only serves the first group, and usually collapses by round three.
A crossword serves both. It can be run properly at the table or picked at slowly from an armchair, and it does not need anyone to keep score or read questions aloud over the film.
Making a family version
Family Christmases are full of crossword material: the year the oven broke, the board game that ended in silence, the aunt who brings her own gravy, the walk nobody wants to go on, the film that goes on every year.
Collect a dozen of those in the family group chat during December, build the grid, and print a stack to hand out with the crackers.
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.