This sample has a single puzzle: Sample Puzzle
The prebuilt standalone binaries for Windows and macOS are at Application Binaries
The source is available at GitHub for smp3142
A clueless crossword can be thought of as a cross between a normal crossword puzzle and a cryptogram. The board is the normal grid of white and black squares, with the white squares needing to be filled in with letters to make words. All groups of white squares, both horizontal and vertical, need to form valid words. Rather than having a list of clues for the words though, the crossword board is filled in with numbers that represent letters. Each letter corresponds to only one number. A few letters will be prefilled in to give a starting point. An example of a starting board is below.
Note that hints used in the board and unused letters are already marked and crossed off.
This application makes printable puzzles in PDF format. Though they are meant to be printed, the PDF files do work well with tablets that allow handwriting such as an iPad or Surface. You can choose to have anywhere from 1 puzzle per file through to 20. The difficulty options are easy, normal, and hard. The harder the difficulty chosen, the fewer hints you will receive.
You can also choose to make a list of two and three letter words used to make these puzzles.
The board consists of three grids. The large grid in the middle is the puzzle itself. The small grid on the left is for the player to keep track of which number corresponds to which letter. The small grid on the right is used to cross off letters after they are used to avoid using a letter more than once.
There are several different ways to approach solving a puzzle. The best place to start usually is to find a two or three letter word that is partially filled in and that has only one possible way to complete it. For example, the words circled in orange below could be useful places to start, but they have too many possible options.
The next place to look is the two words circled in green. There are three possible choices for two letter words that end in "N". "AN", "IN", and "ON". The "I" has been used already, so that option can be eliminated. On the left hand side of the board, there is a six letter word that has 16 used twice followed by a "P". No common word in english has "AAP", but there are several that have "OOP". Therefore 16 must be "O".
Once you have identified a letter, simply fill in every spot that has the number with the letter, then cross it off on the right hand grid. This process is repeated until the puzzle is complete.
If there are no spots that have only a single option, then the next step could be to make an educated guess. Ways to improve your guess include:
Not every letter is used in every puzzle, therefore there could be a couple of unused numbers. These letters are marked off at the start.
Over 37,000 words are used in the list used in this app. It includes some uncommon or informal words, though an effort was made to exclude extremely rare words, uncommon jargon, and most generally offensive words. Please create an issue on the GitHub page letting me know if any words should be considered for addition or removal.
Some words that are valid English and may appear in other word games may not be in the list used to build this app. Two and three letter words are of particular note, so there is an option that can be used to print these words in the app.
The random nature of making the boards also results in some variation in terms of the time it takes to make each puzzle. Generally, it should take 1 or 2 seconds per puzzle page.