How to Choose a Crossword Puzzle Book as a Gift for Someone Hard to Shop For

You know they like crosswords. That is the whole of what you know. Maybe you have seen them with the newspaper folded into quarters on a Sunday morning, or a half-finished grid on the kitchen counter with a pen sitting on top of it. So you go looking for a crossword puzzle book as a gift, and twenty minutes later you are staring at a wall of nearly identical covers, all promising hundreds of puzzles, none of them telling you whether this is the one they would actually sit down with.

That is a solvable problem, and it does not take guesswork. There are five things worth checking, in order, and once you have gone through them the choice usually makes itself. Here is how to work through it.

1. Start with how they already solve

Before you look at a single book, think about where you have seen them solving. This tells you more than any product page will.

• The daily-newspaper solver. They finish most grids and complain when the clues are too easy. They want medium to hard, and plenty of puzzles.
• The weekend solver. They do one or two a week, usually with coffee or in the evening. Easy to medium is the sweet spot, and a book they can pick up and put down matters more than sheer volume.
• The returning solver. They used to solve, then got out of the habit. Give them something forgiving. A book that opens with hard puzzles will go back on the shelf.
• The brand-new solver. They have said they want to try. Easy puzzles, big grids, answers in the back.

If you genuinely cannot tell, assume weekend solver. That is where most people actually live, and an easy-to-medium book disappoints almost nobody.

2. Pick a crossword puzzle book as a gift around one thing they love

This is the step that turns a fine gift into one they talk about. A general crossword book is a safe choice. A themed one says you were paying attention.

You only need to know one thing about them. They are a baseball person. They are into wine. They hike the national parks every summer. They have a dog they talk about more than their job. Each of those points to a book whose clues are built around that subject, which means every grid comes with a small flicker of recognition rather than just a vocabulary test.

The Lillian Jacobs crossword line leans into this. Take Me Out to the Crosswords: Large-Print Baseball Edition is a good example of how it works: 100 puzzles, all built on a two-page spread so the clues sit on one side and the grid on the other, with the full answer key in the back. For someone who has followed a team for forty years, a book of baseball clues lands differently than a book of general ones.

Two cautions. First, do not pick a theme they are only mildly interested in. Mild interest plus a whole book of clues equals a book they finish out of politeness. Second, if their interest is genuinely niche and you cannot find a match, go general. A good general book beats a bad themed one every time.

3. Check the print size and page layout before the puzzle count

Puzzle count is the number every cover shouts at you, and it is the least useful one. Two hundred puzzles in squinting-small print will sit unopened. A hundred in comfortable print will get solved.

What to look at instead:

• Print size. If the recipient is over about sixty, or wears reading glasses for anything close, go large print. It is not a compromise and it is not a book for someone frail. It is just a book you can read without tilting your head toward a lamp.
• Grid size. Bigger squares mean room to write a letter in pen without crowding the neighbours. This matters more than people expect.
• Layout. Clues and grid on facing pages is a real quality-of-life difference. The alternative is flipping back and forth every few clues, which is exactly the kind of small friction that makes a book get abandoned.
• Answers in the back. Almost every decent book has them. Check anyway.

If you want a general-purpose, comfortable-to-read pick that covers all of the above, the Large Print Crosswords Puzzle Book for Adults and Seniors from Lillian Jacobs is the one we point people to most often. It holds 150 crosswords in a large-print American-style grid with a clean layout and organized solutions, and it does not require you to know anything about their hobbies to get it right.

We went deeper on the print-and-layout question in how to choose a large print puzzle book for low vision, if the person you are shopping for has had trouble with small type lately.

4. Be honest about the difficulty

The most common mistake in buying puzzle books is kindness pointed the wrong way. You want to give something impressive, so you reach for the hard book. They open it, stall on the third grid, and put it down.

Aim one notch easier than you think they need. A book that is slightly too easy gets finished, and finishing is the part people enjoy. A book that is slightly too hard gets shelved, and nobody tells you, because who complains about a gift.

The exception is the solver who has explicitly told you they are bored. Take them at their word and go harder. Otherwise, easy to medium for most people, medium for the daily solver.

If you are not sure, a mixed-difficulty book or one that builds from easy to harder gives them somewhere to start and somewhere to go.

5. Decide between a printed book and a digital one

Most crossword solvers want paper. Pen on paper is a large part of the appeal, and a printed book needs no charging, no account and no explaining on Christmas morning. If you are not certain, buy the book.

But a digital version is the better gift in two specific cases. One is the person who already does everything on a Kindle Scribe or reMarkable and would rather not add to a stack of paperbacks. The other is the person who travels constantly and packs light.

For them, Crossword Puzzles for Adults for Kindle Scribe is a hyperlinked PDF with 99 interactive puzzles and solutions, built for Kindle and reMarkable tablets so you can tap through to each section instead of scrolling. It arrives as an instant download, which also makes it the one to reach for when you have run out of shipping time. It is licensed for personal use, so it is a gift for one person, not a family copy.

One honest caveat: do not give a digital puzzle file to someone who does not already own and use an e-ink tablet. The file is not the gift in that case. The learning curve is.

6. Give them something to write with

This takes two minutes and makes the gift feel finished. A puzzle book on its own reads a little thin under the tree. The same book with a decent pen tucked into the band, or a small pack of pencils and a good eraser, reads like you thought about it.

If you are building something larger, a second book in a different puzzle type gives them variety without you having to guess twice. A crossword book and a word search, or a crossword book and a sudoku, covers two different moods.

What to do if you are still stuck

Default to this: large print, easy to medium, general theme, printed. That combination fits more people than any other, and it is almost impossible to get badly wrong. Then, if you learn something specific about what they like, go themed next year.

Crosswords are a quiet, unhurried thing to give someone. They do not need batteries, they do not expire, and people tend to keep them within arm's reach of wherever they sit. Our crossword and large-print puzzle books from Lillian Jacobs and CMH Publishing are worth a browse if you want to see the range in one place before you decide.