Do not know how to make a crossword in Word? I have an idea!

Crosswords are a fascinating and extremely useful puzzle. Scientists believe that their first prototypes appeared in the I-IV century. This is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that during the excavations in the legendary Pompeii a puzzle similar to them was found. The find was dated 79 AD.

The first crossword puzzle, which corresponds to modern concepts, was coined by a man named Arthur Wynne and placed in the Sunday edition of the newspaper "New York World" at the end of 1913.

Anyone can come up and draw a rebus right now. What is needed for this? A bit of free time, an interesting idea and, of course, your desire. In this article, we together try to understand how to make a crossword in Word - a popular text editor from the Microsoft Office suite.

Step 1: Create a table

Open MS Word and go to the "Insert" tab -> "Table". In the menu that appears, you will see the "Insert Table" item. Click this button.

A new window will appear on the screen, in which you can prescribe the parameters for the future table: the number and width of the columns, the number of lines.

The number of columns and lines will depend on the size of your future crossword puzzle. In general, in order not to lose, it is better to first come up with questions and draw a mock-up of the future puzzle on a piece of paper: so you can always see what should happen in the end.

Let's say you decided that you need a table with a size of 10x10 cells. Let's figure out how to make a crossword in Word, just on this example. In the "Number of rows" and "Number of columns" fields, enter the number 10. As for the width, it is best to set the switch to "Permanent", and next to "Auto" enter a value from 0.5 to 0.6 cm - Immediately will be square.

Step 2. Change the parameters of the table

We continue to understand how to create a crossword in Word. So, the table appeared on the screen. But, as you can see, it is very small. Move the mouse to the lower right corner of the plate, so that a diagonal arrow appears, hold down the Shift key and stretch it to the size you want.

Clicking the mouse on the upper left corner, you can move the table on the sheet, for example, place it in the center.

After that we need to change the thickness of the borders. Select the entire object. The yellow tab "Working with tables" appears in the top menu, inside which there is the item "Layout". Open it and select the "Properties" button in the far left "Table". In the window that appears, we need to click on "Borders and Fill ...", and then change the border width to 1.5 pt and save the changes.

Step 3: Create the markup

We continue to understand how to make a crossword in Word. Return to the "Home" tab and find the "Borders" item. Here we need to select two options: "No border" and "Display grid". After that, only service markings will be displayed on the screen, which will not be visible when printing.

Step 4. We enter the answers

Now, in order to understand what a printed and filled out crossword will look like, you need to enter the correct answers in the appropriate fields and put the numbering.

After you do this, highlight the question numbers and change the type of the sign to "Superscript". This can be done in the main tab of the program, in the same place where we change the inscription to bold, underlined, etc.

Next, you need to align the width of rows and columns. To do this, select the table, click on it with the right mouse button and find the same items in the appeared context menu.

Step 5. Preparing the crossword for printing

The creation of a crossword in Word is nearing completion. The main part of the work we have already done. Now it remains only to highlight the boundaries that must be preserved in the printing process. For this we select each word one by one, and then in the already familiar "Borders" tab in the main menu of the editor we select the item "All borders".

Step 6. The finishing touches

In fact, you already know how to make a crossword in Word. There remained only a couple of details. To see before the print how the puzzle is ready to be solved, select the whole table and deselect the item "Display grid" in the "Borders" tab. Auxiliary lines will disappear, and you will see only the crossword itself. In order not to get confused, it's better to print out both versions just in case - with the answers written and without them. For convenience, questions can be placed on the same sheet as the rebus itself.

You can slightly increase the font size so that the numbering is better visible.

To see what happened in the end, and whether or not we understood how to draw a crossword in Word, you can go to the "View" -> "Scale" tab before printing and select "Entire Page" in the window that appears. Now you see the fruits of your work exactly as they will look in print.

A little bit of advice: if the rebus is composed in such a way that a new one is made up of individual letters of other words - the key one, you can select the desired cells with a different color by selecting the "Fill" on the main toolbar and specifying the appropriate shade.