I’m currently working on a program that tries to produce a crossword puzzle. I’ve seen various examples online that use some sort of board that we can assign values to specific coordinates. Is there a way to create said board in mathematica? I’m thinking of a code like this

baseGrid =   Grid[Table[    Table[{FromCharacterCode[i], j}, {i, 97, 106}], {j, 1, 9}],    Frame -> All, Alignment -> Center, ItemSize -> All,    Spacings -> {0.5, 2}] 

However it is quite inefficient and messy when it comes to actually manipulating the “board”. Is there a function or something in mathematica to achieve this “board”? Also how do I implement a coordinate system?

I’ve read the chessboard article on mathematica already but I feel it doesn’t really suit what I need.