A crossword for Mac: the daily puzzle in a window of its own

A search for a crossword for Mac returns two kinds of result that have almost nothing to do with each other, and the mismatch is why the search often ends badly. One kind is a native Mac application that solves puzzle files. The other kind is the daily puzzle from a newspaper, which lives on a website and has no Mac application at all. Someone who wants the second thing and downloads the first ends up with a beautiful solver and an empty puzzle list. Sorting out which of the two is actually wanted takes about a minute, and it determines everything that follows.

Two different things go by the same name

The first kind is a solver. It is a real Mac app, it opens files, and it has no opinion about where the puzzles come from. Black Ink 2 from Red Sweater Software is the best known of these, and its own page describes the job in one line: download, solve, and print puzzles on the Mac. The important word is download. The app is a reader, and the puzzles are files that arrive from somewhere else.

The second kind is a habit. It is the New York Times puzzle, or the Guardian cryptic, or whichever paper's grid gets filled in with coffee every morning. These are web pages. They keep streaks, they sync between devices, they have their own timers and check features, and they are not distributed as files that a third party solver can open in the general case. For these, no Mac app exists from the publisher, and the reason the search keeps returning solvers is that the word crossword is the same in both cases.

The question to answer first is therefore not which app is best. It is whether the puzzle in mind arrives as a file or as a page. Everything below splits along that line.

The native solvers, and what they need to be fed

For file based solving, the format is the thing to understand. Red Sweater states it plainly on the Black Ink page.

Black Ink opens any puzzle file designed for the Across Lite puzzle format. You can download these puzzles from various sources on the internet including the world-famous New York Times puzzle, along with many, many others. Source: redsweater.com

Across Lite is the long standing interchange format for crossword files, and the solvers that matter on the Mac read it. Black Ink 2 requires macOS 10.15.4 or higher, is offered as a free download with premium features unlocked by purchase, and Red Sweater's own store lists a single user licence at $29.95 and a family pack covering up to five people in a private household at $49.95. The Mac App Store version is also free to download with an in app purchase, and its listing shows version 2.4.9 released in August 2026, which is a useful signal that it is maintained.

The same page names another thing solvers do that web puzzles generally do not, which is printing. Black Ink's printing support is described as book grade, for producing a personal copy of any downloaded puzzle. Anyone who prefers pen on paper but wants to source puzzles from a computer is in exactly the right place with a file based solver.

The maintenance question is worth checking for every candidate, because this corner of the Mac software world has a long tail. Crossword Light from Stand Alone, Inc. is still listed on the Mac App Store as a free download, and its listing shows version 1.01 with a release date in February 2011 and a minimum of macOS 10.6.6. That is not a judgement about the app. It is a fact that anyone comparing options should read off the listing themselves, because an app last updated for a fifteen year old system is a different proposition from one updated last month.

The daily puzzles live on the web

For the habit case, the platform situation is short. The NYT Games app, published by The New York Times Company, requires iOS 18.0 or later and its compatibility section names iPhone and iPad. There is no Mac line, so it cannot be installed on an Apple silicon Mac the way some other iPhone apps can, and there is no separate Mac application. The listing shows in app purchases, including monthly Games options and a New York Times Crossword subscription, which is how access is sold.

The Guardian publishes its crosswords on the open web at theguardian.com/crosswords, with the Quick, Cryptic, Quick cryptic, Prize, Quiptic, Genius, Mini and Sunday quick puzzles all listed on one page alongside an archive search by date. Again, a web page, with no Mac app in the picture.

So for both of the most popular English language crosswords, the Mac experience is a browser. That is not a compromise in terms of features, because the web versions are the full product, with the timer, the check and reveal tools, the streak counter and the cross device sync. It is a compromise only in terms of where the puzzle sits, and that is the part a window fixes.

The distinction matters because the two problems have different solutions. A file based solver is solved by choosing an app. A web puzzle is solved by giving the page a window, which is a different kind of decision and a cheaper one.

Routes to a puzzle window

Route	What it takes	Separate from the browser	Keeps the streak and sync	Works offline
Browser tab	Nothing	No	Yes	No
Safari, Add to Dock	Two clicks in Safari	Yes, own data store	Yes	No
Chrome, Install page as app	One click in the address bar	Yes, shares the profile	Yes	No
Native file solver	Install, then download files	Yes	No, files are separate	Yes

Apple documents the Safari route under the title "Turn a website into an app in Safari on Mac", and it is available in the Safari guide from macOS Sonoma 14 onward.

An icon for the web app is added to the Dock and Spotlight Applications. If you were signed in to the website, you're automatically signed in to the web app in most cases. Your user name and password remain the same. Source: support.apple.com

Being signed in already is more important for a crossword than for most sites, because the streak and the solve history belong to the account rather than to the device. A window that starts signed out breaks the one thing that keeps people coming back.

Chrome has an equivalent step and describes what the result can do.

A web app is an app built for the web that you can access on any device. You can use web apps to have a website work as an app and access it on your computer or mobile devices through the launcher or home screen. Some web apps include extra features, like more storage to browse content offline, notifications, file system access, and icon badges. Source: support.google.com

A dedicated site to app tool sits in the same family and adds the things that matter for a puzzle specifically: a fixed window size that suits a grid, a chosen icon, and control over whether a link in an article opens inside the window or goes to the default browser. Setup cost and licence details are on the Pricing page.

What a puzzle window has to get right

Crosswords are typed, not clicked, which makes them unusually demanding of a container. Three behaviours decide whether the window is usable.

The keyboard

Filling a grid uses arrow keys to move, Tab or Return to jump between clues, the space bar or a second press of the same key to switch between across and down, and Delete to back up. Every one of those is a key a container might decide to use for itself. A window that steals the arrow keys for scrolling, or that treats Tab as a request to move focus to its own interface, makes solving impossible rather than merely annoying. This is the first thing to test and it takes thirty seconds.

The window size

A grid is square and clue lists are tall. A window sized like a browser window wastes space to the sides and cuts the clue list short, which means scrolling during a solve. Setting a sensible starting size once, and having it remembered, is worth more here than in almost any other kind of wrapped site. A fixed size that fits the grid and both clue lists without scrolling is the target.

Not closing by accident

This is the reason many people start looking in the first place. In a browser, the reflex that closes a tab is a single keystroke away from the reflex that does anything else, and a half finished grid with a running timer is an unpleasant thing to lose. A single purpose window has no tab to close, so the reflex has nothing to catch.

Streaks, and why the window matters more than it should

Newspaper puzzle apps are built around continuity. The streak counter is the product, in the sense that it is what turns an occasional pastime into a daily one. That has a practical consequence for setup.

A habit needs a fixed gesture. When the puzzle is a tab, the gesture is variable: open the browser, find the window, find the tab, or search for it. When the puzzle is an icon in a fixed Dock position, the gesture is the same every morning, and the same gesture works on a desktop at home and on a laptop somewhere else. Matching the Dock position across two Macs is a small thing that removes a surprising amount of friction.

The other half of continuity is the account. Because a web puzzle stores progress on the server, two machines with the same login show the same partly finished grid, which a file based solver cannot do. Anyone who starts the cryptic on a laptop at breakfast and finishes it on a desktop later should be solving on the web version rather than on files, and should build the window rather than reach for a native solver. What a dedicated window covers is set out on the Features page.

What to change first

Decide which kind of crossword is meant, because the two answers do not overlap. For puzzle files and printing, install a maintained file based solver and check the listing date before paying for anything. For a daily newspaper puzzle, build one window around the puzzle page with Safari's Add to Dock or Kagemusha, size it so the grid and both clue lists fit without scrolling, and solve one puzzle end to end in it before closing the browser tab.