Fill-Ins, also known as Fill-It-Ins or Word Fills, are a variation of the common crossword

Crossword

A crossword is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of white and shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer...

 puzzle

Puzzle

A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...

 in which words, rather than clues, are given. Fill-Ins are common in puzzle magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

s along with word search

Word search

A word search, word find, word seek, word sleuth or mystery word puzzle is a word game that is letters of a word in a grid, that usually has a rectangular or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and mark all the words hidden inside the box. The words may be horizontally,...

es, cryptogram

Cryptogram

A cryptogram is a type of puzzle which consists of a short piece of encrypted text. Generally the cipher used to encrypt the text is simple enough that cryptogram can be solved by hand. Frequently used are substitution ciphers where each letter is replaced by a different letter or number. To solve...

s, and other logic puzzle

Logic puzzle

A logic puzzle is a puzzle deriving from the mathematics field of deduction.-History:The logic puzzle was first produced by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

s. Some consider Fill-Ins to be an easier version of the crossword. Since the Fill-In requires no outside knowledge of specific subjects, one can solve the puzzle in another language.

Solving a Fill-In usually requires trial-and-error. Many times, a first word is already given to help the solver start, but some difficult puzzles require the solver to begin from scratch without any help. Word entries are listed alphabetically by amount of letters.

Rules

The solver is given a grid and a list of words. To solve the puzzle correctly, the solver must find a solution that fits all of the available words into the grid. Generally, these words are listed by amount of letters, and further alphabetically. Many times, one word is filled in for the solver to help him or her begin the game.

Solution methods

Solving a Fill-In typically amounts to searching for words of a certain length with letters in specific places. If a starter word is given in the grid, it is often useful to use it as the beginning search point. Raw "trial and error" is best used when there are only two or three words that can potentially fit at a given location; temporarily assume one of the words, and see if an impossible letter combination results. If so, that word is not the one that should go in the grid at that location. Smaller words may be easier to fit in the grid, but longer words give more clues to connecting words.

Care must be given to marking out words that are not explicitly placed in the grid; this occurs when one fills in a vertical sequence of horizontal words, or vice versa. Forgetting to do this results in "extra words" and often makes the puzzle more difficult to solve.

Variations

A common variation on the standard Fill-In is using numbers, instead of specific words, sometimes called "cross numbers." In this puzzle, the entries could be listed as the number, a mathematical expression, or even an important year.

A more complex variation on the Fill-In is the "diagramless" Fill-In, where the grid is initially empty. Another variation is having no words listed at all, but gathering them from a known group of words, such as the fifty American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

states.