23 / MAY / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
23 / MAY / 2026 — archive puzzle. The world's first maritime-only crossword — 259-term nautical corpus.
Across
Down
Finished Saturday's puzzle? Try Friday's previous too
You're looking at the 23 / 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 23 / MAY / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Saturday grid, don't stop — 22 / 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 — 22 / MAY / 2026
Newspaper-style: today's page publishes the full solution to Friday's puzzle (15 maritime terms). Today's answers stay hidden until tomorrow — play the grid above, or replay Friday's grid.
Across
- The floor of a cockpit or cabin (4) — SOLE
- Any pole that supports a sail — mast, boom, gaff, sprit, yard, whisker pole, or spinnaker pole (4) — SPAR
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- A permanent joining of two ropes, or a rope's end into itself, by interweaving the strands (6) — SPLICE
- Secured — held in place, tied off (4) — FAST
- A large headsail whose clew overlaps the mast, giving extra upwind drive compared with a working jib (5) — GENOA
- The enclosed interior accommodation of the vessel (5) — CABIN
- A stainless-steel safety rail around the bow (or stern, where it is usually called a pushpit) (6) — PULPIT
Down
- Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon — a self-contained 406 MHz satellite distress beacon registered to the vessel… (5) — EPIRB
- A fast-moving, short-lived storm cell producing sudden strong winds and often heavy rain (6) — SQUALL
- The crew member steering the boat at a given moment (8) — HELMSMAN
- The distance of open water, to windward, over which the wind has blown — the longer the fetch, the larger the waves (5) — FETCH
- A short-lived increase in wind strength (4) — PUFF
- A nautical map showing coastlines, depths, aids to navigation, and hazards (5) — CHART
- Automatic Identification System — a VHF-based transponder network that continuously broadcasts a vessel's identity, posi… (3) — AIS
Great for studying COLREGs, VHF procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary — or just as a spoiler if you got stuck.