Color Theory Crossword Puzzle

Print a criss-cross vocabulary crossword for art class: the color wheel, mixing, schemes, light and pigments.

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Color Theory Crossword

Read each clue and write the answer in the squares that start at its number, one letter in each square.

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Answer key: Color Theory Crossword

1COOL2SOE3PRIMARYCPO4W5HEEL6CNUEODEMNA7TERTIARYNRY8TINTA9WOA10SHADENRTREYM

Across 1 COOL · 3 PRIMARY · 4 WHEEL · 7 TERTIARY · 8 TINT · 10 SHADE

Down 1 COMPLEMENTARY · 2 SECONDARY · 5 HUE · 6 CONTRAST · 8 TONE · 9 WARM

Next step Find elements of art words in a word searchFind color names in a word search

All 103 clues

Show all clues and answers

The Color Wheel and Mixing 16

  • Blend To stir two paints into a new color
  • Brown What red and yellow tend to make with some blue added
  • Gamut All the colors that a given set of inks or lights can reach
  • Green Painters get it from blue and yellow; red sits across the circle
  • Newton Scientist whose book of 1704 drew a circle of colors
  • Opposite Where a color's complement sits on the circle
  • Orange Painters get it from red and yellow; blue sits across the circle
  • Palette Wood, glass or plastic surface for laying out paints
  • Primary Red, yellow or blue, on the painters' circle
  • Purple Painters get it from red and blue; yellow sits across the circle
  • RYB Initials of the painters' traditional model of red, yellow and blue
  • Secondary Kind of color made from two of the starting colors in even parts
  • Six How many in-between colors the most common circle has
  • Tertiary Kind of color made from a starting color and one mixed from it
  • Twelve Main divisions on the most common color circle
  • Wheel Circle that shows how colors relate

Hue, Value and Intensity 17

  • Bright Like a lemon or a safety vest: strong and eye-catching
  • Chroma How different a color looks from a gray of the same lightness
  • Dull Weak and grayed, with little life
  • Gradient Fill that slides from one color to the next with no hard edge
  • Grayscale Kind of image with no color, only black, white and what lies between
  • Hue What sets red apart from blue: a color's place on the circle
  • Intensity Brightness or dullness of a color
  • Muted Softened and grayed down
  • Neutral Like gray or beige: quiet, and easily swayed by stronger colors beside it
  • Opaque Describes paint that hides what is under it
  • Pastel Like baby blue: a member of a pale, soft family of colors
  • Saturation How free a color looks from whitishness
  • Shade Deepened form of a color: black has gone into it
  • Tint Pale form of a color: white has gone into it
  • Tone Softened form of a color: gray has gone into it
  • Value Lightness: what ranks a color between black and white
  • Vivid Strong and pure, not grayed

Color Schemes and Harmony 25

  • Accent Small touch of a different color that stands out
  • Advance What fiery colors are said to do in a painting
  • Afterimage Ghost picture left in the eye from staring, in the complement of the first color
  • Analogous Kind of plan built from next-door colors on the circle
  • Atlas Book of color samples set in order; early ones appeared in 1915 and 1919
  • Balance Even weight among the colors of a design
  • Bauhaus German school whose teachers pushed color study forward in the early 1900s
  • Camouflage Practical use of color that helps a thing hide
  • Chemist Job of the Frenchman who wrote a founding book of color theory in 1839
  • Clash What two colors do when they fight each other
  • Complementary Kind of pair from facing sides of the circle that mixes toward gray
  • Contrast What colors from across the circle show most, side by side
  • Cool Like blue and the colors near it
  • Dominant The main color of a design, with the others in support
  • Harmony Pleasing fit among the colors of a design
  • Leaves In fall they often form a side-by-side color plan
  • Mood Feeling that the colors of a room are said to set
  • Poet Calling of the German who published Theory of Colours in 1810
  • Recede What icy colors tend to do in a painting
  • Scheme A planned set of colors for a design
  • Split Kind of plan that swaps a color's complement for the two beside it
  • Tetradic Plan of four colors in two pairs from across the circle
  • Thirty Degrees from a base color to each neighbor in a side-by-side plan
  • Triadic Plan of a color and two more, each 120 degrees apart
  • Warm Like red, yellow and the colors between them

Light, Eyes and Screens 23

  • Absorb What a black surface does with nearly all the light that hits it
  • Additive Kind of mixing done with beams of light, where all together give white
  • CMYK Initials of the four inks of color printing
  • Cones Eye cells of three types, each sensitive to a different part of the visible band
  • Cyan The C of the four printing inks; in the band of light it sits beside blue
  • Infrared Band just past red that the eye cannot see
  • Key Name of the black plate in four-ink printing; the K of the ink initials stands for it
  • Magenta The M of the four printing inks, midway between blue and red on the circle
  • Nanometers Tiny units for waves of light; the eye sees from about 380 to 700
  • Pixel Unit of a digital image; in a gray image each holds a number from 0 to 255
  • Prism Clear wedge that bent each color at its own angle in an experiment of 1665
  • Rainbow Sky arc that is always seen with the Sun at your back
  • Reflect To send light back; which waves an object sends back decides its color
  • Refract To bend light, as a glass wedge or a raindrop does
  • Retina Layer at the back of the eye that holds the cells that sense light
  • RGB Initials of the three colors of light a screen mixes
  • Rods Eye cells that take over in the dark and tell us little about color
  • Seven How many colors a book of 1704 named in the band of white light
  • Spectrum White light holds the whole of it; a glass wedge shows it
  • Subtractive Kind of mixing done with inks and paints, which take light away
  • Sunlight Daytime white light, which raindrops can spread into colors
  • Violet Color with the shortest waves the eye can see
  • Wavelength Each color of light has its own; red has the longest the eye can see

Pigments and Color Names 22

  • Binder Part of a paint that carries the colored powder and makes it stick, such as egg yolk
  • Carmine Strong red coloring that comes from an insect
  • Cave Kind of wall with some of the earliest earth-color pictures
  • Cochineal Insect gathered from prickly pear pads for a red coloring
  • Crimson The national color of Nepal, a deep red
  • Dye Unlike the powders in paint, it dissolves and can bind to fibers
  • Egypt Ancient land whose blue is thought to be the first man-made coloring
  • Indigo Deep blue most tied to denim cloth and jeans
  • Iron Its oxide gives the earth paints their yellows and rusty reds
  • Lapis ___ lazuli: blue stone once ground into one of the costliest blues of Renaissance painters
  • Mauve Color found by accident in 1856 in a try at making a medicine
  • Ochre Family of natural earth colors, yellowish unless it is the red kind
  • Pigment Ground-up substance in paint that does not dissolve
  • Sienna Earth color sold as raw or burnt
  • Snail Sea animal that gave the ancient world a costly reddish coloring for cloth
  • Swatch A sample chip or patch of a single color
  • Teal Deep greenish color named for a Eurasian duck
  • Tempera Painters' medium made with egg yolk
  • Tyre Ancient city of Phoenicia that gave its name to a royal cloth color
  • Ultramarine Blue once brought to Europe from mines in Afghanistan
  • Umber Deep earth color whose name may come from the Latin for shadow
  • Vermilion Red whose name comes from the Latin word for worm

How this list was compiled: Clues written for this site for grades 4 to 12, in five sets. Terms, names and dates were checked against English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and, for light and its wavelengths, NASA's page on visible light (science.nasa.gov) in October 2026. The wheel and mixing clues follow the painters' model of red, yellow and blue; a clue about light or printing says so. Licence: own work

How it works

This color theory crossword puzzle prints on Letter or A4, answer key included. The first puzzle has 12 basics, among them Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Hue, Tint, Shade, Complementary, Warm and Cool.

Read the full guide

Five sets after the basics

The Color Wheel and Mixing has Orange, Green, Purple and Gamut. Hue, Value and Intensity has Saturation, Chroma, Neutral and Pastel. Color Schemes and Harmony has Analogous, Triadic, Split and Accent. Light, Eyes and Screens has Spectrum, Prism, Cyan and Magenta. Pigments and Color Names has Ochre, Sienna, Ultramarine and Vermilion.

Paint is not light

The wheel clues follow the painters' red, yellow and blue. A screen mixes red, green and blue light, and a printer lays down cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink; Cyan, Magenta, RGB and CMYK sit in Light, Eyes and Screens, and each clue says which kind of mixing it means.

  • Hand out Color Wheel Basics after the first mixing lesson, and Color Schemes and Harmony before students plan a painting.

Questions and answers

Is there a printable color theory crossword puzzle with answers?

Yes. Press Print: the grid and its clues come first and the answer key prints last, filled in, with the answers by clue number. It is free, with no sign-up.

What grade is the color theory crossword puzzle for?

Color Wheel Basics suits grades 4 to 8. The five themed sets suit middle and high school art, with answers such as Analogous, Subtractive and Ultramarine. These bands are our judgment, not a published standard.

What are the primary, secondary and tertiary colors?

On the painters' wheel the primaries are red, yellow and blue. Two primaries mix to a secondary: orange, green or purple. A primary mixed with a secondary gives one of six tertiary colors, twelve colors in all.

What is the difference between a tint, a shade and a tone?

A tint is a color mixed with white, a shade is a color mixed with black, and a tone is a color mixed with gray. All three are answers in the first puzzle.

What are complementary colors?

Two colors from opposite sides of the color wheel. On the painters' wheel the pairs are red and green, yellow and purple, and blue and orange. Side by side they contrast strongly; mixed, they make gray.

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