Crossword Puzzle

Bureaucratic German is the only foreign language you actually need in Germany but can learn nowhere. No course, no dictionary, just a tax assessment that assumes you are already a lawyer. This crossword flips it around: instead of being buried by words like Freibetrag, Einspruch or Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, you collect them one by one, each with a clue that explains in plain terms what it means.

Every puzzle is freshly assembled from a vocabulary of real bureaucratic terms. The words cross cleanly, every number belongs to a clue, and the clue is not a dry definition but a short plain-language explanation. Steuerbescheid? "The letter from the tax office with your tax calculation." Einspruch? "You disagree with the tax assessment." You solve the puzzle and understand the system as a side effect.

Two modes decide how serious it gets. Official German drops you straight into the bureaucratic vocabulary: deadlines, notices, applications, paragraphs. General stays lighter with everyday words for when you just want to solve a puzzle without thinking about the tax office. Switch any time, a new puzzle is one click away.

Stuck? There are two lifelines. Check tells you whether the letters you have so far are correct without giving away the answer. Reveal fills the whole grid when you truly cannot get any further or simply want to look up how the word is spelled. No penalty, no score anxiety - this is a puzzle, not an authority.

The timer runs if you want it to. For some people a crossword is a race, for others the most relaxing thing in the world. Both are allowed. At the end your time is shown, and a new puzzle is already waiting to be cracked.

Everything runs directly in your browser, with no signup and without a single byte going to a server. The puzzle is generated locally, your entries stay on your device. It works on a phone just as well as on a desktop, in the queue at the citizens office just as well as on the sofa.