12 / MAY / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
12 / MAY / 2026 — archive puzzle. The world's first maritime-only crossword — 259-term nautical corpus.
Across
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You're looking at the 12 / MAY / 2026 daily maritime crossword — a free nautical puzzle drawn from our 259-term corpus of COLREGs rules, VHF radio procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary. Every daily puzzle is deterministic — players worldwide saw exactly the same grid on 12 / MAY / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Tuesday grid, don't stop — 11 / MAY / 2026's puzzle is waiting with a fresh layout from the same nautical vocabulary. Warning: some clues lean on COLREGs Rule numbers and IALA buoyage — brush up if you're rusty.
Browse the full crossword archive to replay every past puzzle, or print this one to A4 using the 🖨️ Print button above — solutions are printed upside-down at the bottom of the page, newspaper-style.
Yesterday's clues & answers — 11 / MAY / 2026
Newspaper-style: today's page publishes the full solution to Monday's puzzle (15 maritime terms). Today's answers stay hidden until tomorrow — play the grid above, or replay Monday's grid.
Across
- Length Waterline — the fore-and-aft length of the hull measured at the waterline; a major factor in hull speed (3) — LWL
- Digital Selective Calling — a feature of modern VHF and SSB radios that allows a pre-formatted digital distress alert, i… (3) — DSC
- To reduce effective sail area in strong wind by rolling, folding, or partly lowering a sail (4) — REEF
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- To turn the bow through the eye of the wind so the boat changes from one close-hauled course to the other (4) — TACK
- A U-shaped metal fitting closed by a threaded pin (D-shackle, bow shackle, snap shackle etc (7) — SHACKLE
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- Any pole that supports a sail — mast, boom, gaff, sprit, yard, whisker pole, or spinnaker pole (4) — SPAR
- The generic term at sea for any rope in use (4) — LINE
- A fabric and framework spray hood forward of the cockpit that shelters the crew from wind and spray (6) — DODGER
- A legacy unit of depth equal to six feet (1 (6) — FATHOM
- To roll or gather up a sail so it stows neatly on a boom, stay, or inside a spar (4) — FURL
- A tapered hardwood or metal spike used to open the strands of a rope when splicing (3) — FID
- A sail that has been trimmed so the wind pushes against the reverse side of the cloth, filling it from behind (5) — ABACK
- A pyrotechnic distress signal — handheld red flares are for close-range visibility, parachute red flares for long-range,… (5) — FLARE
- To bind or secure with line or webbing (4) — LASH
Great for studying COLREGs, VHF procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary — or just as a spoiler if you got stuck.