Give your brain a workout with these printable crossword puzzles. How many answers can you get correct?
Test your brain with these free printable crosswords
What’s a nine-letter word for a tricky word puzzle that exercises the mind? That’s right: crossword! Like hard riddles and visual brainteasers, printable crossword puzzles are a great way to keep your mind sharp (and boredom at bay). To save you the trouble of having to hunt for downloadable crossword puzzles online, we’ve collected 30 of the most fun brain games that ran in the large-print edition of Reader’s Digest.
To play, simply download these printable crossword worksheets, give them your best shot and then come back here to see how many answers you got right. It’s the perfect mix of fun and brainy. So grab a pencil (or pen if you dare!), scroll on and get ready to test your crossword skills!
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Dickens printable crossword puzzle
Charles Dickens wrote what is arguably the most famous Yuletide story, A Christmas Carol. But that’s just scratching the surface of his literary genius. The titles of four other Dickens classics appear in this brainteasing crossword puzzle.
In this printable crossword puzzle, a handful of familiar phrases are presented anew—with a twist. Once you determine that twist, answers will fall into place more easily.
The link between the seven themed entries is obvious. But there is more here than meets the eye. Take a second look and try to find another connection in this seemingly hard crossword puzzle.
There are scores of common expressions that include parts of the body. For example, you can bend an ear, lend an ear, put your ear to the ground, play something by ear or eat an ear of corn. The five theme entries in our puzzle employ five body parts.
From writer Stephen Crane to actress Rhea Perlman and skateboard superstar Tony Hawk, bird names are ubiquitous. You’ll find five more in this puzzle. We wanted to include Meadowlark Lemon, but it just has too many letters!
We’re firm believers that you don’t have to wait until Oct. 31 to enjoy a good horror movie. Springtime screams are just as fun as Halloween thrills. We prefer the classics, though, and have included six in this puzzle.
We’ve all heard about George Washington’s wooden teeth and the (probably apocryphal) story of the cherry tree, but how much do we know about our vice presidents? For instance, who was the first Roman Catholic vice president? That would be Joe Biden. Below, you’ll find five more pieces of veep trivia, all about vice presidents from the 20th and 21st centuries. A quick hint? One of these did go on to become POTUS.
It was The Book of St. Albans in 1486 that first listed numerous imaginative names for collectives, such as a gaggle of geese and a diligence of messengers. In the intervening centuries, people have taken up this game with a prickle of hedgehogs, an exaggeration of fishermen and even more fun terms (murder of crows, anyone?). Here, we offer seven more playful collectives.
Daniel Craig took his character James Bond for a spin for the final time in No Time to Die. His successor has yet to be announced, though there is much speculation. This issue’s puzzle focuses on the pre-Craig Bonds. Can you identify them by film title and date?
Where were you in ’72? The Poseidon Adventure was on the big screen, All in the Family ruled the small and Mr. Coffee made his debut. A number of interesting news stories happened as well, some of which are mentioned in this puzzle.
No matter what time of year you try your hand at these printable crossword puzzles, you can appreciate the autumn vibes in this brainteaser. The answers feature five of the colors most commonly thought of as fall colors.
What do actress Cicely Tyson, singer Rosemary Clooney and fictional character Pepper Potts, who runs Iron Man Tony Stark’s company, have in common? Each has an herb (or a seasoning) in her name. You’ll find five similarly flavorful (or medicinal) names in this puzzle.
This puzzle features uplifting advice from a person who is the embodiment of what she preaches. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Solve the puzzle, read the quote, then heed the advice.
June is bursting forth—in this puzzle, at least. Clues in bold include five famous Junes, with facts related to each in the grid. Did you know that prolific voice actress June Foray provided the voices of both Rocky the Flying Squirrel and his nemesis, Natasha Fatale?
Each year, Merriam-Webster adds new words to its dictionary. Five recent additions are answers to the clues in bold below—and all are words that have been swirling around in the collective consciousness over the past few years.
April lends its name to many fictional characters, as well as to famous songs and movie titles. There’s the movie Enchanted April, the song “April Showers” and the classic TV character April Dancer (The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.). You’ll find five other monthly entities in this crossword puzzle.
Whatever your age, you likely have fond childhood memories of the sitcoms you grew up with, whether it’s Leave It toBeaver, The Brady Bunch or Modern Family. In this crossword puzzle, we honor a handful of sitcom classics. All have stood the test of time; the most recent debuted in 1984. So go ahead and solve this downloadable crossword puzzle to reminisce.
Sample the tasty wordplay in this puzzle. Here is your party invite from the baker: “Wheat love for you to join us.” Some entries are clever, while others are groaners, but none of them will add any inches to your waistline. Apply your brain to the subject of grain.
We’ve played with the names of six famous figures from children’s stories in this puzzle. Examples of tweaked names include the soft-spoken Little Miss Muffled, the lazy princess Sleep-in Beauty and the ungainly Prince Alarming. Think of those in the puzzle as the protagonists of some fractured fairy tales.
Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson is known as Mr. October for his outstanding performances in multiple World Series. The only Mrs. October we could find is the title character in an obscure 1973 novel. This puzzle contains seven famous people with Mr. and Mrs. in their names. Enjoy—perhaps while munching on some Mrs. Fields cookies or drinking a Mr. Pibb.
Some say that our personalities are determined by the stars. In this crossword, we imagine the sun signs of famous people—from literature, entertainment and history—based on their names. Could they be accurate? Solve and see.
The placement of the five theme entries in this puzzle is significant, and once you deduce one of them, the others should be easier to surmise. Answers touch on science, geography, entertainment and holidays.
The title of this puzzle is Noel, but it has nothing to do with that December holiday. Deduce the reason for this title, and you’ll get a valuable hint in solving the puzzle. Or you can dive right in! The more solutions you reveal, the closer you’ll get to the common factor among the five theme answers.
The five theme answers in this puzzle come from different categories of trivia, but they have one thing in common: All have a little extra weight attached. What that cryptic explanation means is for you to determine.
After 2020, we’re all very familiar with the term social distancing. The year also gave us sharents, a word for parents who love to brag about their undeniably terrific child by showing off pictures or videos. This puzzle contains five coinages that popped up or rose to prominence in 2020.
Aside from identifying the third month of the year, the word march is a verb, a noun and a proper name. There’s March Madness (most of which, ironically, occurs in April), the March Hare, the March of Dimes and more. You’ll find five very different marches in this puzzle.
This puzzle pays tribute to new things: places, titles and a person. There are five altogether. To save space (and to make things a bit more challenging), the word new has been omitted from the answers.
You hear them once, twice or 20 times, and they stick in your head like earworms: They’re classic slogans! We’ve included eight in this puzzle. That’s certainly a lot, but we know you can do it! As the Adidas slogan says, “Impossible is nothing.”
With the dwindling of daily newspapers, fewer people read the funnies these days. Still, some comic strips will always be classics, and you’ll find five in this crossword puzzle.
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Reader’s Digest is known for humor and brain games, including quizzes, puzzles, riddles, word games, trivia, math, pattern and logic puzzles, guessing games, crosswords, rebus, hidden objects and spot-the-difference challenges. We’ve earned prestigious ASME awards for our entertainment content and have produced dozens of brainteaser books, including Word Searches, Word Power, Use Your Words, Fun Puzzles and Brain Ticklers, Mind Stretchers, Ultimate Christmas Puzzles and more. Our 10 published volumes of Mind Stretchers were edited by Allen D. Bragdon, founder of the Brainwaves Center and editor of Gamesmagazine. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
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