Geography crossword puzzle
Twelve clues that travel the planet: dry places, frozen rivers of ice, the line around Earth's waist and the papers you need to cross a border.
Curated by 
Esme Rook
·
Updated October 2026
Play it right here
12 clues to solve: 5 across and 7 down. Tap a square and type; tap it again to switch between across and down. Solved words lock in green.
Across
- 4. Its needle always points north (7)
- 6. Africa, Asia or Europe, for example (9)
- 8. The imaginary line that splits Earth into two hemispheres (7)
- 10. Everest is the tallest one on Earth (8)
- 11. The document you show at the border when you travel abroad (8)
Down
- 1. The city where a country's government sits, like Paris or Tokyo (7)
- 2. Land surrounded by water on every side (6)
- 3. A huge river of ice that moves very slowly (7)
- 5. Very dry land; the Sahara is the largest hot one (6)
- 7. The Pacific is the largest one (5)
- 9. The Nile and the Amazon are famous ones (5)
- 10. A flat drawing of the world or part of it (3)
A trip in twelve answers
Half of the answers are the landscape itself: what surrounds an island, what the Sahara is, what Everest is the tallest of. The other half is the human layer on top, with the cities where governments sit, the drawing that fits the world on paper and the two travel companions, one for your pocket and one that points north. Every clue is a fact you can check in any atlas.
Where does the difficulty hide?
Geography words are long: seven of the twelve answers have seven letters or more, including a nine-letter one. That makes the start slow and the finish fast, because every solved answer feeds letters into the next. If you are stuck, count letters. The enumeration in brackets after each clue is part of the puzzle.
CONTINENT, COMPASS and the hubs
The nine-letter answer is CONTINENT, clued with Africa, Asia or Europe, and it crosses GLACIER, DESERT and CAPITAL. EQUATOR is the other hub, touching OCEAN, DESERT and RIVER. MAP is the shortest word at three letters and hangs off MOUNTAIN alone, so it is easy to leave blank by accident. A solid opening is COMPASS, since a needle that always points north has one answer, and its letters lead into CAPITAL and ISLAND.
An atlas page you can print
Free puzzle PDF above, separate answer key PDF next to it, one sheet each. More themes live on the printable crossword puzzles page. It fits a geography lesson, a long car trip or anyone who likes maps. The science crossword pairs well with it, and the word searches by theme add more topics.
