Leaving do crosswords: the office send-off that isn't another card
A five-minute game for the pub that captures the in-jokes a leaving card cannot.
The hour in the pub
A leaving do usually puts two teams who barely speak into one corner of a pub for an hour. Conversation runs to the new job and the commute, and then stalls.
Handing round a crossword about the person leaving gives the room a shared task and an excuse to tell the stories the clues refer to. It also works in the team channel, which is where half the office now is.
In-jokes make the best clues
The strongest answers are institutional: the meeting room nobody books, the client who emailed at midnight, the project that ran two years long, the coffee order, the spreadsheet with their name on it.
Write each clue so it is guessable from the crossing letters even if you were not there. That way new starters can still fill it in and hear the story afterwards.
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.