Cryptic Crosswords Puzzler

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I hadn’t used this app for a while, came back to it to find all my purchased puzzles gone. I’m sure that, thanks to legal technicalities, this isn’t theft, but the effect and feel are the same. I guess there must have been a number of updates in between, causing this. As for the puzzle quality, the small number of freely supplied ones are rather good, but the ones then bought on the strength of these are not generally of the same quality. There are errors in the clues, for example ‘14 down’ in the one I just did (puzzle 16, XW 13x9) has the word ‘emplying’ in the clue; is this an erroneous ‘implying’ or ‘employing’? There is no way of knowing. Some clues are what I think of as ‘clever clever’ rather than genuinely clever; presumably, crossword compilation involves a very skilled balancing act between accessibility and opaqueness, and I’m not sure that this level of skill is generally on show here, or that the compiler is really carefully considering the likelihood of the solver finding any particular solution. I also feel that there is more of a tendency towards culturally-based information than I like in a cryptic (as opposed to ‘quick’) crossword. So, nearly very good, but, in the end, not.

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All the taster puzzles on the free bit of the app are 15 by 15. I purchased 192 further cryptic crosswords based on that, only to find that 2 puzzles in, they have shrunk to 9 by 9. Definitely not impressed.

I love the cryptic crosswords and find the “quick” ones boring and not challenging. What I have started to find though is that clues can often be repeated in different crosswords or are very similar to previous ones. I also would like to see different levels of difficulty as I have started to find the current selection quite easy now and less entertaining. Someone complained that you cannot find an error as the game doesn’t show you where the error is. Actually it DOES show you by highlighting the wrong letter in RED. Great for beginners of cryptic crosswords, just needs a couple of harder levels.

I’m totally hooked. Great crossword writing! Nice uncomplicated interface. Had an issue the other day that was swiftly resolved. Recommend!

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Just get an error message when I try to play anonymously. Crap. Uninstalled.