What is Torellio?
Torellio is an AI-powered crossword generator. Type a theme — anything from "Greek mythology" to "the cast of Friends" — and we'll generate a playable crossword on the fly. No signup. No paywall. Print-ready PDFs and shareable URLs included.
Who built this?
Torellio is built and operated by David Jones — an independent developer based in the UK. The site is a solo project, not backed by a company or a venture fund. It exists because crosswords are fun and AI made them cheap to produce.
How it works
Two things happen when you submit a theme:
- AI generates words and clues. Google's Gemini model produces a themed word list with crossword-style clues, filtered against a dictionary to catch hallucinations.
- An algorithm builds the grid. A layout engine fits the words together into a real crossword shape, prioritising compact density. The grid you play is the output of multiple runs picking the cleanest fit.
Daily puzzles use the same pipeline, but theme selection is hand-curated by us — seeded into a queue weeks in advance. Cron generation runs at 00:05 UTC each day.
What's the catch?
Display ads. Torellio is funded by Google AdSense — that's it. No data brokering, no email harvesting, no upsell. The privacy policy spells out exactly what we log.
Contact
Bugs, feature ideas, theme suggestions, or just a hello — reach me via bongosclub.uk.