Some things take time: H5P Crossword

Some things take time. Have a look at this request on the H5P forum for example: farrisimin wished for a word search puzzle and a crossword puzzle back in 2015. Last year, one of his wishes was granted. Jithin Thankachan contributed Find the Words to the pool of H5P content types. But what about a crossword puzzle? Well, there’s only so much that software developers can do in their free time. But what if someone funded some of the work that’s required to build such a content type for H5P?

Enter LTC, a company in Hamburg, Germany that did just that. But not just that! They also want to share the result with the H5P community. Guess what, here it is! You will have to wait a little before the H5P core team finds some time to review and release H5P Crossword to the H5P Hub. However, feel free to download the demo content from this page and to upload it to your platform in order to install the required library. Please note: An admin will have to do that for you if you lack the rights to manage H5P libraries.

Features in a nutshell

  • Allows you to create a pool of clues and words that will be used to generate random crosswords or have the words at fixed positions
  • Is not limited to using A-Z, but uses uppercase characters only
  • Allows you to optionally use a background image
  • Allows you to add a special solution word
  • Provides you with an option to add extra clues: text, image, audio or video
  • Adjusts the layout based on the horizontal space given
  • Supports xAPI, e.g. for transferring results to a host system’s gradebook
  • Supports saving and restoring the current state (if activated in the H5P plugin settings)
  • Has keyboard support on the grid and additional text input fields for improved accessibility
  • Supports readspeakers (fairly well)
  • Has an optional instant feedback mode and the usual H5P views for results and the solution

Some more insight

I already demonstrated a beta version recently during my monthly live stream on twitch. I am pretty sure that I explained some of the things that I just mentioned briefly 🙂

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https://youtu.be/Vown6nidXdk

Future development

The future development of H5P Crossword is not set in stone. If you have any ideas for improving the content type, please leave a comment or rather get in touch with LTC directly – as I mentioned, this was contract work. But please be aware that the development will depend on the availability of resources (free time and/or funding). Speaking of resources … You can find the source code on github and do changes yourself.

38 Replies to “Some things take time: H5P Crossword”

  1. Hi Oliver. Thanks for sharing this crossword puzzle. It looks awesome! In your live stream on Twitch last night which I couldn’t attend but watched the recording after, you mentioned installing it to try it out! I wonder how I could do that? I can’t install on either my H5P.org or H5P.com accounts as yet so how would you recommend going about this for the purpose of trying/testing out content types that haven’t been officially released yet! Could this also be on your list for doing a short video on this very topic? Best regards, Ben

    1. Hi Ben!

      The answer is simple: You cannot install new content types on H5P.org or H5P.com. That needs to be done by Joubel. You’ll have to use a self-hosted platform like WordPress or Drupal, or you can try it on Lumi (https://youtu.be/k-cYKH6_ZNU).

      1. Yes. Thanks Oliver. I will try Lumi. I also have a self hosted Moodle instance so would I be able to install this crossword there? Again I think it might not work because I would have to first install the library for this content type I am assuming ?

        1. Hi Ben!

          H5P content files always contain all libraries that are needed to run the content, and if the user who tries to upload the file has the necessary privileges to manage H5P libraries, H5P will install missing libraries from the content file.

  2. This crossword puzzle will be a great add on for H5P! Kudos!
    A feature I’ve always been waiting for in crossword puzzles is the ability to use images as the clues instead of text.
    If that can be a feature it would increase the applications for graphic based topics as well (I teach music!)

    1. Hi Khew!

      Thanks. Noticed the info symbols behind the clue? That’s where you can already add images, videos and audios.

      Best,
      Oliver

  3. Nice h5p acivity. There is just something that trouble me : you choose the color blue to highlight the associated hint below the grid, but this color blue is very very close to the color when you select a text in a browser. So it look like the text is selected when it’s just a simple highlight. Maybe change the color ?

    1. Hi!

      Thanks for your feedback!

      There are a couple of things that get highlighted and I am not sure what you are referring to. The blue is the standard H5P blue that’s used for buttons, etc., and I am not sure where you might mistake it for highlighted text. However, the H5P core team will give the content type a UX review anyway, so I’ll put it on the list of things that I am not sure of.

      By the way: You can, of course, re-style H5P Crossword like any other H5P content type if you prefer a different design.

      Best,
      Oliver

  4. Thanks! I was already suspecting the highlighting of the clue label, but I wasn’t sure (as not all browsers use blue – Brave, for instance, that I use, uses red). My previous answer still holds: It’s the Joubel blue, and I’ll wait for the UX review anyway.

  5. Hi, Oliver
    I’m a brazilian public school teacher and I am implementing a wordpress self hosted site with h5p activities for my students.
    How can I install your library in my site?
    I have h5p wordpress plugin installed with all other official libraries installed.

    1. Hi! As mentioned in the post: “However, feel free to download the demo content from this page and to upload it to your platform in order to install the required library.” You can download H5P content – as usual – via the Reuse button.

  6. An excellent addition.

    However, I am running into one problem. I’m running the crossword package in Lumi so the issue might be there. I have no way of checking. I think it is the same crossword generator you are presenting here.

    After a little experimentation I think the issue is that the puzzle doesn’t allow two words to share the final letter, i.e. ‘dogs’ down and ‘cats’ across cannot meet on their final ‘s’. If the clues are set up with this positioning it seems that the across word and any words connected to it are discarded.

    1. Thanks for reporting that! I’ll take a look what the problem might be. I am using an external library for computing the crossword structure, maybe it has a bug that I need to fix.

  7. Just in case, I subsequently discovered that it wasn’t just if words met on their final letter. It sometimes (but not always) occurred if only one of the words was using its final letter. It also depended on the length of the word.
    The two words zszzzz & qqqqqs caused an error and a crossword couldn’t be made with them but adding just one more q to the second word (qqqqqqs) and the error went away.

  8. I’m sorry for asking such a noob question, and taking up your time, but how would I use your source code and use this with Lumi? Is there a folder to place the files in or a compiler to deal with?

    1. You would download the demo content and upload it to Lumi as you could do with any H5P content type on any H5P enabled platform. No source code use required.

      From the blog post: “[…] feel free to download the demo content from this page and to upload it to your platform in order to install the required library.” 😛

  9. Oliver, I think that congrats are in order : I have noticed that “Crosswords” has been reviewed and approved by the H5P core team and it is now “out” as an official and brilliant H5P content ! As for me, I have been happily using it on my website and will still ; my students like their crosswords 🙂
    Cheers,
    Isabelle

    1. Yes, the H5P core team has released it and yet has to release a tiny update that fixes a quite obvious bug that magically slipped my attention, my customer’s attention, the H5P core team’s attention and the H5P beta testers’ attention 😀 You can get the updated version from this page already, of course.

  10. Just a heads up, on mobile when typing from the input underneath the clue, there’s a bug that repeats all letters currently typed upon the addition of any new letter.

    For example, if you type in “W”, then an “H”, instead of the expected “WH” the answer bar will show “WWH”. If the bar already shows “PAR” and you type an “I”, the output would be “PARPARI”.

    This only happens when typing from the text input below the crossword canvas, and only on mobile. I am using a Samsung Galaxy S21 for reference.

    1. Thanks for your post, but I fail to reproduce this problem. Please leave a more accurate step-by-step description or post a video recording somewhere.

      1. It seems to only be on Android devices, when tested on iPhones everything works as intended, on both Chrome and Safari.

        However it has been reproduced on multiple Samsung (S21 and AO1) devices using Chrome.

          1. This seems to be an issue if you’re using the “Samsung Keyboard”. It’s fine if you e.g. use the “SwiftKey Keyboard”. Not sure what the underlying cause might be here or if that’s fixable.

          1. For those who are reading the previous comments but not following the H5P forum:

            I have added a workaround for that bug in Samsung’s virtual keyboard to Crossword v0.4.10. The glitch is still visible briefly, but the input is not tampered with anymore. You can verify it here.

            There may be a better solution, but this is what I had time for only.

            If you need the solution right now, you could download the demo content and upload it to your site (or if you’re lacking the rights to install libraries, your admin will need to do that). If it’s not urgent, you could wait until the H5P core team finds time to release the update on the H5P Hub.

  11. Hi Oliver, me again!

    It appears that on iPhones and Safari the clue order is descending, rather than ascending. When I view this page’s crossword (on a Mac) in Chrome I see clues ordered lowest to highest, and on Safari the clues are ordered highest to lowest. I have had others with iPhones confirm this happens even when their devices run Chrome, but on my Samsung it is always ascending order. Is there any reason you know of why this may be?

    1. Hey, Mollie!

      I’ve fixed the behavior already. I do not know however when the H5P core team might release an update containing the fix.

      Best,
      Oliver

  12. Hi Mollie!

    What an interesting find.

    First of all, however: It’s only on Safari (or rather its webkit engine). Apple forces other browser vendors to use Apple’s webkit engine on iOS, so no matter what browser you use on your iPhone, it’s rather a different “theme” for Safari and will always have all the flaws that Safari (or the webkit engine) on iOS has. This may yet be another one.

    I’ve never seen this before and wouldn’t know why this would happen, but I’ve seen so many strange things on Safari … Not suprised anymore. I’ll look into it.

    Best,
    Oliver

  13. Hey Oliver, you may remember me – I used to visit your blog a lot a few years ago before Covid. What you do for the H5P community is AMAZING. I just visited your blog after a long time and looked at the latest updates. The GAME MAP looks so exciting. I hope this will enter the H5P public depository soon.

    I wanted to ask you – do you know if there is any settings in the H5P quiz content types (e.g. multi-choice, fill in blanks) that have an option for me to set a maximum time limit for each question? I want to use H5P.com (subscription) and then embed it on my non-wordpress website using iframe.

    Thanks man! Keep up the amazing work!

  14. Hi Oliver,
    Thank you for creating this content. My question is:
    When I create an answer that has more than one word, the crossword adds the ‘space’ between the words as a blank box. Is there a way to include answers which contain more than one word so that there is no space between them when the crossword is created?

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