21 / MAY / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
21 / MAY / 2026 — archive puzzle. The world's first maritime-only crossword — 259-term nautical corpus.
Across
Down
Finished Thursday's puzzle? Try Wednesday's previous too
You're looking at the 21 / 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 21 / MAY / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Thursday grid, don't stop — 20 / 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 — 20 / MAY / 2026
Newspaper-style: today's page publishes the full solution to Wednesday's puzzle (15 maritime terms). Today's answers stay hidden until tomorrow — play the grid above, or replay Wednesday's grid.
Across
- The stairway or ladder leading from the cockpit or deck down into the cabin (12) — COMPANIONWAY
- Toward, at, or behind the stern (3) — AFT
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- To interpose a sail or other object between the wind and another sail so the downwind sail is starved of breeze (7) — BLANKET
- The mostly horizontal upper surface of the hull (4) — DECK
- The forwardmost structural member of the hull — the bow's leading edge (4) — STEM
- Short, steep, broken waves — typically caused by wind over a shallow or restricted fetch (4) — CHOP
Down
- A tapered hardwood or metal spike used to open the strands of a rope when splicing (3) — FID
- A stainless-steel safety rail around the bow (or stern, where it is usually called a pushpit) (6) — PULPIT
- Any pole that supports a sail — mast, boom, gaff, sprit, yard, whisker pole, or spinnaker pole (4) — SPAR
- An inflated plastic or rubber buffer hung over the side to protect the hull when alongside a dock or another vessel (6) — FENDER
- The side or direction away from the wind — where the wind is blowing toward (7) — LEEWARD
- The fitting (on deck or on the keel) into which the foot of the mast is stepped (8) — MASTSTEP
- To make fast — attaching a sail to a spar or stay, or tying a line to a sail (4) — BEND
- Multi-Function Display — a large chartplotter screen able to show radar, AIS, sonar, engine data, camera feeds, and char… (3) — MFD
Great for studying COLREGs, VHF procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary — or just as a spoiler if you got stuck.