A popular socio-cultural phenomenon, the crossword puzzle, is considered a peculiar aspect of uncodified (folk) linguistics, a spontaneous, not conditioned by an institutional intention, practice of reflecting people on the language in the referent-instrumental field of everyday consciousness. The main objective of the publication is to show that the discursive format of the crossword puzzle actualizes fundamental knowledge, concepts and categories from the thematic area of the word linguistics (lexicology). The lack of a unified strategy for the presentation of linguistic knowledge, which appears before the addressee in a wide range of  modal-pragmatic intonation – from the ones which are strict lexicographic to the comic ones – is specific for this form of communication as a speech genre. A crossword puzzle acts as a semiotically multifaceted formation, integrating in its substance different aspects of the ontology of the communicative-information product: visual and verbal, play and academicism, standard and creativity. The multifaceted semiotic nature of the crossword puzzle determines its special place in the typology of texts and speech genres – the categories in which the form-creating intention underlying any intellectual work is embodied. It is a creolized (polymodal, syncretic) text dominated by pictorial semiotics and visual representation functions; in the speech genres systematics, the crossword puzzle occupies a peripheral position – due to the combinatorial specificity of its substance and the multifaceted discursive properties. Based on the analysis of the empirical material extracted from two leisure-specialized periodicals, the author reveals the peculiarity of updating knowledge about the linguistic nature of the word due to the format of communication.