How to use the Crossplay solver
- Enter the board. Click a square and type the tiles already in play, or skip the typing and import a screenshot of your game. Type ? before a letter to mark it as a blank.
- Enter your rack. Up to seven letters; use ? for each blank tile.
- Solve. Every legal move is listed with its exact score. Click a result to preview it on the board, including which bonus squares it uses.
How this Crossplay solver works
Unlike simple word unscramblers, this is a true board solver: it runs a full move-generation algorithm over your actual 15×15 Crossplay board. Every suggestion is a legal placement — it respects existing tiles, forms valid cross words, applies double/triple letter and word squares only to newly placed tiles, scores blanks as zero, and adds the 40-point bonus when a play uses all seven rack tiles. Click any result to preview it on the board.
If you searched for a Crossplay cheat or a screenshot solver, this is the same tool: import the board from a phone screenshot or type it by hand, then read the ranked legal plays.
The move generator is the same anchor-and-cross-check approach used by tournament Scrabble engines: it finds every anchor square touching the existing tiles, builds left parts and right parts through a trie of the dictionary, and only keeps placements where every perpendicular word is also valid. A mid-game board with 60 tiles typically has 20,000 to 40,000 legal plays; the solver enumerates all of them and sorts by score in well under a second, entirely in your browser.
Crossplay tile values and board layout
Crossplay uses its own letter values (not Scrabble's): A E I N O R S T = 1 · D L U = 2 · C H M P = 3 · B F G Y = 4 · W = 5 · K V = 6 · X = 8 · J Q Z = 10 · blanks = 0. The bag holds 100 tiles including 3 blanks, and using all 7 tiles in one turn earns a flat +40. The board is not the Scrabble board either: the corners are triple-letter squares, the eight triple-word squares sit on the edges three in from each corner, and the centre star doubles the opening word. See the full tile values chart and the bonus square map.
Word lists for Crossplay
The solver finds the plays; these lists help you find them yourself at the table. Start with the two-letter words (they unlock parallel plays), then the three-letter words (they unlock hooks), then the emergency lists: Q without U, short J, X and Z words, and vowel dumps. New to the game? The rules guide and strategy tips cover the rest.
FAQ
- Is every suggested word playable in NYT Crossplay?
- Placements and scores are exact. The word list is based on a large tournament-style dictionary plus the NWL23 two-letter additions (QI, ZA, OK and others); NYT curates its own list from NWL23, so on rare occasions a suggested word may be rejected — the next result down will be legal.
- Does it handle blank tiles?
- Yes — type ? in your rack for each blank. Blanks are tried as every letter and always score zero, exactly like the game.
- Can I solve a board that already has words on it?
- That's the point: type the existing tiles onto the board editor first. The solver only suggests moves that connect to them legally.
- Does it work with the daily Crossplay game and with live matches?
- Both. The solver doesn't connect to the game — it works from whatever board you give it, so it applies to the daily puzzle, friend matches and real-time matches alike. In a live match you'll want the screenshot import; typing 60 tiles by hand takes too long.
- Why does the score differ from what Cross Bot shows?
- Usually because a tile was entered on the wrong square, so a bonus square is being counted (or missed). Re-check the board against your screenshot; the layout page shows where every bonus square is. If the board is right, the scores match to the point.
- Is using a solver cheating?
- In a match against another person, using it mid-game is against the spirit of the game and we don't recommend it. Its intended use is study: after a game, run your board to see what the best play was and why, the same way chess players review with an engine. Cross Bot in the app does a lighter version of this.
- Does it work offline or on my phone?
- It works on any phone browser. After the first load the dictionary is cached, and the solving itself never contacts a server, so it keeps working on a poor connection.
- Is this free?
- Completely free, no account, and the solver runs entirely in your browser.