In Cross-Wordsmith players enter words into a grid. Unlike in most such games each grid space does not contain a letter but a section of a word: a prefix, root, or suffix. Many of the grid spaces are color-coded to show which of the three they must contain, while others can have any section. A list of allowable sections is provided; on their turn a player chooses at least one of these to add to the grid and marks off all they use (each one can only be used a certain number of times). All adjacent word sections must combine into words, but this does not necessarily have to be done linearly; it is possible to turn corners when forming words. Each word section has a point value and players score for all words they form on each turn.