Every letter counts is a variant of crossword that is played on a much smaller grid than a standard crossword grid.
The rules are very similar to the usual crossword, in that there are clues and that they must be answered in the grid. However there is one very important addition to the usual rules - you are given a list of letters that appear in the solution, and each letter must only be used once in the entire solution grid!
Therefore let's imagine that you place the word 'dream' as one of the answers in the grid. You then cross out the letters D, R, E, A, M and must not place them anywhere else in the solution for the puzzle grid.
Clearly this drastically reduces the options available for other answers, and therefore the grids in every letter counts are necessarily a lot smaller and generally have less crossovers than those that appear in a standard crossword grid. You will also notice that it means no word that contains the same letter more than once can appear in the grid, for instance the word 'FOOD' could never appear since it has two O's in it, but the rules of the game say that each letter of the alphabet can only appear once.
To help you keep track when solving these puzzles, a list of letters is given and crossed out as you use each one, so you can see what is left. The solving restriction means that clues can be a bit vaguer than may be the case with standard quick crosswords whilst still leading to a solution. Solving the final clue can simply come down to performing an anagram, for instance, rather than solving the clue if you prefer - or get stuck!
We hope you enjoy this interesting and very novel variation of the standard crossword puzzle - it's a small but deceptively fun puzzle!