Enjoy some wordplay with 'Crosswords DS'
— -- If you have ever aspired to doing The New York Times crossword puzzle in one sitting, a new video game may be able to help you attain your dream.
Crosswords DS packs more than 1,000 crosswords into the handheld Nintendo DS, offering the puzzles on four levels of difficulty. The Easy level has 200 puzzles on which children and crossword newbies can cut their word-defining teeth. Starting with four-by-four word crosswords, the puzzles gradually increase in difficulty and size, allowing you to test your mettle on three harder levels.
In addition to the crosswords, the game also provides more than 200 word searches (puzzles where you scour a grid of letters to find hidden words) and numerous anagrams (puzzles where you are given a set of letters and then challenged to recombine them into as many different words as possible). Both the word searches and anagrams can be played on three levels of difficulty.
The mechanics of playing word games on the Nintendo DS work remarkably well. The game has you tilt the DS unit on its side so you hold it like a book, and accommodates both left- and right-handedness. For right-handed players, the left screen provides you with your clues, while you use the right screen to write on the touch-sensitive screen — and vice versa for left-handed players.
For the crosswords, you can easily zoom in to write your letters in the crossword boxes. The handwriting-recognition software works very well. If you change your mind about a letter, you can just write over what you wrote — no need to erase. For word searches, simply touching the screen starts the highlighting process. Using letter tiles, you can easily slip letters into line to form words for the anagram puzzles.
The pluses for this game are many, particularly for kids and adults new to crosswords. The game starts with a tutorial explaining how to play the three word puzzles. To help crossword rookies, the game has a feature called "Entry Assist," which tracks each letter you enter into the crossword. If you are correct, the letter turns black, but if you are wrong, it turns red.
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