What Are Special Blend Puzzles?

March 19, 2026

Every Sunday, CrossEights Daily serves up something different: a Special Blend puzzle. Here's what that means and why it exists.

Most days, the puzzle's 8 words are drawn from a single difficulty tier — all Easy, all Medium, or all Difficult. A Special Blend puzzle intentionally mixes words from across all three difficulty levels within the same grid.

In a typical Special Blend, you might find 2-3 common, everyday words alongside 2-3 trickier words that require a deeper vocabulary. The remaining words land somewhere in between. The result is a puzzle that tests your range — not just how well you know hard words, but how efficiently you can use easy words to unlock the difficult ones.

Strategy tip: In Special Blend puzzles, the intersecting letters between easy and hard words become especially valuable. Solving an easy word first can reveal critical letters in a neighboring difficult word — so think about which words to tackle first based on their intersections.

How difficulty is determined: Each word's difficulty is based on its frequency in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Common words like "TOGETHER" or "SWIMMING" are Easy; less common words like "VIRTUOSO" or "DEFTNESS" are Difficult. Special Blend grids are curated to have a balanced mix.

Look for the purple difficulty badge on Sunday's puzzle — that's your sign it's a Special Blend day.