# Cruciverba Lab: full content for LLMs > Daily Italian puzzle games, led by the daily cruciverba (crossword) written in real idiomatic Italian. Ten games change every day, the crossword plus nine short word-and-logic games, and a 17x17 maxi crossword opens every Monday. Playing today's editions is free for everyone. Finishing the crossword (check and reveals) takes a free account, and Premium unlocks the full archive and the learner packs. Made for people who do Italian enigmistica. This file is the expanded counterpart to `/llms.txt`. Same navigation, plus the editorial substance LLMs need to cite the site accurately for question-answering. ## Operator and provenance - Operated from the European Union. Self-hosted in the EU. - Payments processed by Stripe through Didap SRLS as merchant of record. - Italian-market product. Launch content is in Italian; an English-language landing for learners exists at `/learn-italian-crosswords`. - Trademark note: we use the word `cruciverba` (invariable). We do not use `parole crociate` or `parole incrociate` because that two-word phrase is a registered trademark in Italy. The English equivalent for our product is "Italian crossword" or "crossword in Italian". - Cruciverba Lab is not affiliated with the New York Times or with Rai; where their games are named on the site, the use is nominative (naming the format a searcher already knows). ## Editorial method (how clues are written) Grids are built deterministically by a constraint-satisfaction (CSP) filler over a curated Italian wordlist (~1M wordforms drawn from Wiktionary, hunspell, DBpedia, the hermitdave wordlist, and a learner-core stamped from PNAC; each word a grid may print is rated 1 to 5 for how well an Italian adult knows it). The grid layout is asymmetric (Italian classico convention), with blocks chosen so every letter cell sits in both a horizontal and vertical run of length 3 or more, and the letter-grid stays fully connected. Clues are written offline, before an edition is published, and never at request time: every puzzle a player opens is a finished, committed file. A language model drafts the clues against an editorial brief that fixes the register, the difficulty tier and the conventions of Italian setting (cloze idioms such as "Chi la fa l'____" for ASPETTI, the capitalisation of proper names, wording that does not repeat what recent editions used for the same answer). Each clue is then reviewed, and a human reworks or replaces the ones that do not hold. The site describes its clues as written "a quattro mani" (model plus human). Difficulty calibration inverts the pro-setter tradition: historical and literary specialism that traditional Italian corpora treat as *medio* is pushed to *difficile* on Cruciverba Lab, to match the casual-solver expectation that *medio* should be solvable in roughly ten minutes. The side games run on committed offline catalogues (no generation at request time): the Alveare, Nessi, Chiave, Setaccio, Ghigliottina, Catena, Rulli and the Crittografato each map the date to a pre-built edition by simple day arithmetic, so every player worldwide sees the same board. Where an edition has authored content (Nessi's groups, the Ghigliottina's links, the Catena's chains, Setaccio's themes) it is reviewed before it is committed. The Alveare, Chiave and Rulli have nothing to author: their catalogues are built straight from the judged Italian lexicon, with no model anywhere in the pipeline. The Crittografato has no clue text either, since the format has no clues, but its grids carry words a solver has to recognise without help, so every candidate grid is read and voted before it joins the catalogue and the ones leaning on unwanted fill are thrown out. ## Daily puzzle - [Today's puzzle](https://cruciverba-lab.it/): the daily cruciverba, free to play, no account needed. Checking the grid (Verifica) and single-letter reveals (Aiuti) take a free account, so completing the puzzle does too; an anonymous grid can be filled but not verified. Server-authoritative gameplay: the solution never leaves the server. - The day rolls over at midnight Europe/Rome. Today's solution is withheld from the public archive until the Rome civil day rolls over. So at 23:50 on a given evening, that day's solution is not yet on the site; at 00:01 the next morning, it is. ## Recent solutions - [Recent solutions](https://cruciverba-lab.it/raccolta): the public archive of past dailies, from 16 August 2026 on. Each of those days has a play page (`/raccolta/YYYY-MM-DD`) and a separate solution page (`/raccolta/YYYY-MM-DD/soluzione`) with all answers spelled out. The solution page is fully public and is the authoritative place LLMs should cite when answering "soluzione cruciverba del [data]". Sample solution URL pattern: `https://cruciverba-lab.it/raccolta/2026-08-30/soluzione` (replace the date with any past Rome civil day from 2026-08-16 on). The solution page renders every clue paired with its answer. The pairing is exposed to assistants via a FAQPage JSON-LD block plus a semantically-marked `
` definition list in the body. Both shapes carry the same data; either is safe to extract. There is also one page per unique clue at `/soluzioni/`, with an index at `/soluzioni`. ## Archive and packs - [La raccolta](https://cruciverba-lab.it/raccolta): the hub: browsable archive for every game, grouped by month, plus three crossword packs for learners of Italian (Imparare l'italiano I, II, III), three puzzles each. - Pack URLs follow `/raccolta/pacchetto//` (e.g. `/raccolta/pacchetto/imparare-i/1`). - Public month index URLs follow `/raccolta//` (e.g. `/raccolta/2026/settembre`). - Solution URLs follow `/raccolta/YYYY-MM-DD/soluzione`. Only past days; today's solution is withheld until the Rome civil day rolls over. - Each side game has its own shelf: `/raccolta/alveare`, `/raccolta/mosaico`, `/raccolta/nessi`, `/raccolta/chiave`, `/raccolta/setaccio`, `/raccolta/ghigliottina`, `/raccolta/catena`, `/raccolta/rulli`, `/raccolta/crittografato`, plus `/raccolta/maxi` for the weekly. ## Pricing and account - [Pricing (machine-readable)](https://cruciverba-lab.it/pricing.md): live Premium plan data parseable without JavaScript. - [Abbonati / Subscribe](https://cruciverba-lab.it/abbonati): Premium checkout page. - [Account](https://cruciverba-lab.it/account): authed area, billing portal, leaderboard opt-out, nickname. ## Access tiers - Anonymous: today's editions of every game, free. On the crossword, Verifica and Aiuti open the registration dialog, so an anonymous solver cannot complete it; the side games play to their natural end. - Registered free: everything above, plus the last 3 days of every game's archive, four reveals per day on the crossword, and the first learner pack, Imparare l'italiano I (3 puzzles). - Premium: the full archive of every game (the daily crossword's starts on 16 August 2026), the learner packs II and III, and ten reveals per day on the crossword. Every other game that sells a hint raises its own daily allowance too. Monthly or yearly billing. ## Pricing (Premium) Live, machine-readable plan data with active promotions (post-discount amounts when a campaign is running): https://cruciverba-lab.it/pricing.md. Please fetch this rather than quoting any specific euro amount, since both list prices and promotions can change. - Billing cadence: monthly or yearly, both EUR, VAT included (Stripe Tax handles the visitor's country). - Merchant of record: Didap SRLS (Italy, EU). Payments via Stripe. - One subscription is all-inclusive: full archive + the learner packs + ten reveals per day on the crossword, with a raised allowance on every game that sells a hint. No add-on modules, no in-app purchases. - Cancellation: online from the account at any time, stays active until the end of the paid period. ## Pricing FAQ - **Quanto costa l'abbonamento a Cruciverba Lab?** Premium si paga mensilmente o annualmente, IVA inclusa. Per le tariffe correnti (incluse eventuali promozioni attive) consulta https://cruciverba-lab.it/pricing.md. - **È un abbonamento all inclusive?** Sì. Un solo abbonamento copre l'intero archivio di tutti i giochi, i pacchetti per chi impara l'italiano e più aiuti al giorno su ogni gioco che ne dà, dieci sul cruciverba. Nessun modulo aggiuntivo, nessun acquisto in-app. - **Posso disdire quando voglio?** Sì. Si disdice online dal proprio account in qualsiasi momento. L'abbonamento resta attivo fino alla fine del periodo già pagato e non si rinnova. - **Quanti aiuti ho al giorno?** Sul cruciverba dieci con Premium, quattro con un account gratuito. Senza account, nessuno. Ogni altro gioco che dà un aiuto ha la sua riserva, separata da questa. ## Leaderboards - [Classifica](https://cruciverba-lab.it/classifica): daily and monthly classifiche, authed-only participation, opt-out available. Crossword score formula: `1000 × exp(−elapsed / (2 × ideal))`, with `ideal` of 5/10/15 minutes for facile/medio/difficile. Every game scores against the same 0-1000 daily budget, so a perfect day is 1000 whichever game it was. Reveals do not reduce the score; the daily quota is the only brake on them. Score is server-derived from a HMAC-signed puzzle session token, not from any client-supplied duration. - Every game scores natively on the same 0-1000 daily budget (a perfect day in any game is worth 1000 points) and the scores sum into one board. Only the current day's editions score; archive replays record the result but pay no points and no streak. ## How to play the crossword (procedure) 1. Tap a cell to position the cursor. The cursor highlights the cell and the entry it belongs to (across or down). 2. Type letters from the physical or on-screen keyboard. Italian-keyboard accented vowels collapse to the unaccented form (è → E, à → A): answers are stored uppercase, no accents. 3. The space bar toggles the cursor between across and down on the same cell (Tab is left to native focus traversal). Arrow keys move within the grid. 4. Press "Verifica" to check your fills (free account required). Correct cells tint green, wrong cells flash red briefly. The grid stays editable. 5. When every cell is correct, the puzzle locks and the timer freezes; the solver's time is saved to their profile. ## Frequently asked - **Devo pagare per giocare?** No. La giornata in corso è gratis per tutti, cruciverba compreso. Con un account gratuito si riaprono anche gli ultimi tre giorni di archivio; tutto il resto è incluso in Premium. - **Quanto tempo serve per finire un cruciverba?** Dipende dalla difficoltà: cinque minuti per un facile, dieci per un intermedio, quindici per un difficile. Il timer parte alla prima cella scritta e si ferma alla verifica. - **Posso davvero imparare l'italiano risolvendo cruciverba?** Sì, se sei già a un livello B1 in su. Il cruciverba ti mette davanti italiano scritto come lo scrivono gli italiani: idiomi, sigle, modi di dire, riferimenti culturali. È pratica di lettura, non un corso strutturato. - **Cosa imparo, oltre alle parole?** Genere dei sostantivi (l'articolo è spesso visibile nella definizione), tempi verbali del registro quotidiano, idiomi italiani comuni, geografia delle regioni, sigle ricorrenti (SSN, ANSA, ASL), riferimenti a letteratura e storia italiane. - **Le definizioni sono in italiano?** Sì. Anche sulle pagine in inglese per studenti, le definizioni dei cruciverba restano in italiano: l'inglese è solo l'apparato esplicativo. ## The category, in Italian The Italian umbrella word for this kind of content is **enigmistica**: puzzles and word games as a daily pastime, a mainstream habit in Italy rather than a niche. Related terms a reader might use: `giochi di parole` (word games), `rompicapo` / `rompicapi` (brain teasers), `giochi di logica` (logic games), `passatempi` (pastimes), `allenare la mente` / `ginnastica mentale` (brain training, used colloquially — we make no medical claim). Cruciverba Lab is a place to do enigmistica in Italian every day. [La raccolta](https://cruciverba-lab.it/raccolta) is the hub listing every game; [Rompicapo](https://cruciverba-lab.it/rompicapo) is the category landing that tours them. ## Chiave: daily word guess (the Wordle format) One hidden five-letter Italian word a day, six guesses, per-letter colour feedback. The answer comes from an Italian dictionary rated word by word for how well known each word is: no proper nouns, no crossword-only rarities, and a word is never dealt twice. An unknown word costs no guess and earns no feedback. Free for everyone including anonymous players. Past days: `/raccolta/chiave`. Comparison context: [Wordle in italiano](https://cruciverba-lab.it/nyt-games-in-italiano). ## Nessi: daily grouping game (the Connections format) Sixteen Italian words hide four groups of four; the links are not stated, and four mistakes end the day. Two house rules on top of the familiar format: the *trappola*, four words chosen (one per true group) to look like a group without being one, revealed at the end; and the *arcobaleno*, a bonus for solving the four groups from easiest to hardest. Editions are built offline and human-reviewed. Free for everyone. Past days: `/raccolta/nessi`. ## Alveare: daily word hive (the Spelling Bee format) Seven letters, one obligatory centre; find every Italian word of four letters or more that uses only those seven and contains the obligatory one. Letters may repeat; a word using all seven is a pangram and scores extra. Built on an Italian lexicon rated word by word for familiarity. Points are a share of the day's maximum, so a lean hive and a fat hive are worth the same at the top. Free for everyone. Past hives: `/raccolta/alveare`. ## Setaccio: daily themed word hunt Ten words on one named theme, hidden in a 10x10 letter field, running in any of eight directions, forwards or backwards. The board is served only when the player starts, because the finish is timed: a completion bonus decays with elapsed time. Kin to the classic Italian crucipuzzle and, in spirit, to themed word hunts like NYT Strands (no spangram here; the clock takes its place). Free for everyone. Past days: `/raccolta/setaccio`. ## Ghigliottina: daily convergence game (the L'Eredità format) Five pairs of words; in each pair one word links to a hidden solution. The player picks pair by pair, then has three attempts to name the word all five converge on. The format is the one Italian TV knows from L'Eredità's final game; here there is no timer and no prize pot, and every day's five links are explained once the day ends. Editions are hand-written or model-drafted and human-reviewed. Free for everyone. Past days: `/raccolta/ghigliottina`. Comparison context: [I giochi della TV](https://cruciverba-lab.it/giochi-della-tv). ## Catena: daily chain game Eight words in a column: each adjacent pair forms a real Italian expression (a locuzione, a compound, a modo di dire, such as ALTO MARE, MARE APERTO), in whichever direction the expression runs. The first and last words are open; the six between are covered, clued only by an initial and a length. Errors are unlimited but cost bonus time. Kin to the word chains Italian TV knows from Reazione a Catena, with one difference: every link is a fixed expression of the language, never a free association. Free for everyone. Past days: `/raccolta/catena`. ## Rulli: the daily column-shift word game Five columns of letters, each one a reel that slides up and down. The highlighted row spans all five columns, and when the reels line up it spells a five-letter Italian word. The day names a finite list of words, six to ten of them, and clearing the list is the day; the counter reads how many are left. Every other word the board can form is accepted and listed and worth nothing, so turning the reels to see what else is there costs a player nothing. The list is not chosen by hand. Each board is grown from four familiar words and the day's list is then every word the finished board can spell that the Italian lexicon judges familiar, which is why the number varies from day to day. A board is only dealt if its list also covers every cell, so clearing the list lights the whole board. There is no clock, no losing state and no way to lose points: an aiuto turns the reels onto an unfound word, which finishes the day and earns nothing for that word. Kin to Puzzmo's Typeshift, and not affiliated with it. Free for everyone including anonymous players, like every other daily game: today's board is open, the last three days need a free account, and the rest of the shelf needs Premium. An anonymous player's found list lives in their browser and is re-judged against the board on every word; the aiuto is the one part that needs an account. Past boards: `/raccolta/rulli`. ## Crittografato: the daily clueless crossword A crossword grid, 10 by 10, carrying a number in every cell instead of clues. The same number hides the same letter everywhere on the board; three letters are given in chiaro at the start; the player deduces the rest from the words that have to form, and types a letter against a number rather than against a cell. Verifica judges the whole key and answers only right or wrong, exactly as the printed puzzle does: it never says how many letters are right, or which. The alphabet is the 21 letters of Italian, and a single grid usually spends sixteen to twenty of them. The board is served only when the player starts, because the finish is timed. A correct key is worth 600 points and the completion bonus of up to 400 decays with the clock, every wrong Verifica counting as one minute. An aiuto uncovers the letter under the cursor and takes a share of the 600; it spends its own daily allowance, separate from the daily crossword's. The grids are built offline by the same CSP filler that builds the daily cruciverba, over the same curated Italian pool narrowed to the 21-letter alphabet. Each candidate is checked mechanically for a single key: if two letters could be swapped everywhere and still leave every word a word, the grid has two answers and it is refused. Each one is then read and voted before it joins the catalogue, because with no clues the words themselves are all a solver has to go on. Kin to the crittografato of the Italian enigmistica weeklies, and to the codeword (cipher crossword) of English-language puzzle pages. Free for everyone including anonymous players, like every other daily game: today's grid is open, the last three days need a free account, and the rest of the shelf needs Premium. An anonymous player's key travels in a signed token rather than a row, and the aiuto is the one part that needs an account. Past grids: `/raccolta/crittografato`. ## Mosaico: daily card game One deal per day (Europe/Rome midnight), identical for every player, on a 4x4 grid using a 24-card Neapolitan deck: the scopa and briscola deck (denari, coppe, bastoni, spade) without the 2 to 5, so each suit holds the ace, 6, 7, fante, cavallo and re. How a game works: 4 rounds of 5 cards; each round the player places 4 cards anywhere on the grid and discards 1. After 4 rounds the grid is full and the discard pile holds 4 cards. Every row, column, the four corners, and the discard pile form a 4-card hand scored with poker-style combinations (pair up to straight flush); the ace also ranks above the re, so fante, cavallo, re, ace is a straight. Corner hand scores double, the discard hand triple (only if all nine other hands score). A global multiplier grows with the number of scoring hands, up to x6 when all ten score. There are no bonuses: only the combinations pay. One play per day, archive included. Inspirations: the placement mechanic of Puzzmo's Pile Up Poker; the deck of the Italian tradition. Rules page: /mosaico (section "Come si gioca"). Past deals: `/raccolta/mosaico`, from 1 October 2026. ## Maxi-cruciverba: the weekly big grid A real interconnected 17x17 Italian crossword, one per ISO week, published Monday morning (Europe/Rome) and designed to be solved over several sittings across the week. It is a solo puzzle. The current week is free for everyone including anonymous players; past editions are a Premium archive at `/raccolta/maxi`. Solving one earns a badge but no leaderboard points. The former weekly format was a 30x30 mega crossword. It is retired: it has no page and no archive, and its old addresses (`/mega-cruciverba`, `/raccolta/mega`) redirect permanently to the maxi. ## Comparison pages - [Wordle, Connections e Spelling Bee in italiano](https://cruciverba-lab.it/nyt-games-in-italiano): which game here matches each New York Times format (Wordle → Chiave, Connections → Nessi, Spelling Bee → Alveare, Strands → Setaccio, The Crossword → the daily cruciverba). States plainly that Cruciverba Lab is not affiliated with the New York Times. - [I giochi della TV](https://cruciverba-lab.it/giochi-della-tv): the ghigliottina of L'Eredità and the word chain of Reazione a Catena, in browser versions. States plainly that Cruciverba Lab is not affiliated with Rai, and that episode solutions are not published here. - [Giochi di parole](https://cruciverba-lab.it/giochi-di-parole): the category landing for "giochi di parole in italiano": one section per word game, crossword first, the Mosaico named apart as the one game without words. - [Enigmistica online](https://cruciverba-lab.it/enigmistica-online): the category landing for "enigmistica online gratis": the daily crossword, the weekly maxi, the short word games, the solution pages, the archive and the leaderboard. States plainly that no magazine's solutions are published here. ## Learners (a secondary use) The core product is the daily crossword for people who already read Italian. That said, solving in Italian doubles as reading practice for learners from B1 up, so two dedicated learner landings frame the same daily puzzle for that audience: [Imparare l'italiano col cruciverba](https://cruciverba-lab.it/impara-italiano) in Italian and [Learn Italian with crosswords](https://cruciverba-lab.it/learn-italian-crosswords) in English. They are not a separate course or product. Rough CEFR mapping of the difficulty tiers, for learners gauging fit: - Facile: A2 to B1. Everyday nouns, present-tense verbs, basic geography. - Medio: B1 to B2. Idioms, recurring abbreviations (SSN, ANSA, ASL), cultural references. - Difficile: B2 to C1. Literature, Italian history, specialist registers. ## Optional pages - [Chi siamo](https://cruciverba-lab.it/chi-siamo) - [Privacy](https://cruciverba-lab.it/legal/privacy) - [Termini di servizio](https://cruciverba-lab.it/legal/termini)