Cracking clay soils are found worldwide. Asia, Africa and Australia have the largest areas of these soils. Cracks are the main problem for irrigation of these soils. When these soils lose their moisture, shrink and the cracks will start to develop. The management of cracking clay soils has important influence on water use efficiency. To determine the effects of different irrigation water managements on yield, soil characteristics and water use efficiency (WUE) of rice ( Oryza sativa ) in cracked paddy soils, field experiments were conducted on a silty clay soil, a typical swelling soil of Guilan province, northern part of Iran. The experiments were a factorial completely randomized block design with three replications. The crack treatment includes crack width (3-4 mm, 1.5 cm and 2.5 cm) which are called W 1 , W 2 and W 3 , respectively. The irrigation treatment includes irrigation to fill up the cracks and up to the start of ponding, irrigation to fill up the cracks and up to 2.5 cm of ponding and irrigation to fill up the cracks and up to 5 cm of ponding, which are called I 1 , I 2 and I 3 , respectively. The results showed that the effects of crack width, depth of irrigation water and their interaction on volume of irrigation water and WUE were significant at 1%. For crack treatments, the reduction of depth of ponding caused a maximum of 36.5% improvement in WUE. The irrigation water loss for the W 1 , W 2 and W 3 treatments were 56.73, 64.53 and 78.17%, respectively. The initial soil moisture has important influence on infiltration of cracking soil and a large portion of irrigation water will be used to fill up the cracks at the beginning of infiltration. The soil moisture changes have low influence on the exponent and high influence on the coefficient of the Kostiakov-Lewis infiltration equation. As the soil moisture decreased, the coefficient of the equation increased. The cumulative infiltration for the W 3 treatment as compared to the W 1 and W 2 treatments was 4.34 and 2.35 times higher, respectively. The dry soil bulk density was affected by the soil swelling process and the maximum crack area at the lowest soil moisture was 32.2%. Effect of crack width on rice yield was significant at 1% level. The effect of depth of irrigation water and the interaction effects of crack width and depth of irrigation water on rice yield were significant at 5% level. The highest yield (3.279 ton ha -1 ) belonged to the I 3 W 1 and the lowest yield (2.04 ton ha -1 ) belonged to I 1 W 3 . The crack width and the interaction effect of crack width and depth of irrigation water on blank grain percentage