Crossword Light Reviews

First off, I am not trying to say that this is an awful game, I just don't like the spacing. The basis of this game is great and it is a valiant effort, but it is WAY to scrunched together. I've been playing for about ten minutes now and the whole time, I have been yelling at the game because I pressed the wrong button because it is WAY to close to the one I wanted. In landscape mode, the clues are WAY to close to the right-hand keys, expecially the backspace. Whenever you try to hit it, you have to be extra careful or else you will hit a clue instead and it will bring you to it and if it's one you have already done, you might end up deleting it. I just found it very frustrating. If you can get past all that, then it really is a great game, but I just think it's to squished...

Too many repeats to the puzzles.

It stopped working some time ago on my 4th. Generation iPad. I recently upgraded to an iPad Pro so thought I’d give it another try. Didn’t work on initial startup so I deleted it and downloaded it again. Still doesn’t work. Just repeatedly gives me a message about having trouble restoring purchases.

CrosswordLight used to be great, until they stopped supporting it. Go back in time two years and it gets five stars. Today all you can get is weird British puzzles (no offense to my London friends). This is no longer what I paid for. Searching for a new crossword app.

How disappointing...I bought CrosswordLight for the daily puzzles. Stopped working and now I am expected to pay again. I'll buy another app before I spend my money on the same companies app!

Like others, my subscription is no longer being honored after this update. Once I finish the puzzles I have, I'll be looking for a new crossword app.

The latest update is a POS! CrosswordLight will no longer load any new puzzles. Customer service, of course, blamed it on Apple. They told me to delete CrosswordLight and reload. Now, I have no puzzles at all. It looks like the only way to download new puzzles is to subscribe. If that is the new business model, then just say so up front, do not lie to us. I was a subscriber for YEARS, but no longer. Boo!!!!!

Puzzle (app) mechanics are great. Readability. Hints. Function. Layout. All good. Puzzles themselves, not so much. I do CW puzzles for fun, to keep my mind sharp, and to learn new words. National newspaper puzzles are good at this. These puzzles here are created by people enamored with their own cleverness. If you're looking to broaden your word base, look elsewhere, unless, that is, you need to know the first name of the mayor of the Brazilian hamlet 23.5 km. ESE of Rio (7 letters), or, the Latin name of the 3rd earthen jar from the left found in the Assyrian caves by Fred Flub in 1424 AD (6 letters). The creators also love rural British colloquialisms even a Londoner wouldn't recognize. But their worst creations are words with hints ending in "?" or "sort of like", etc. These words and word groups are complete non-sequiturs and couldn't be guessed by anyone until you have about 93% of the letters. It's sort of like "Let's show you how clever we are by coming up with a 20 character word group only WE are smart enough to figure out." Really a shame because the puzzle mechanics and presentation is first rate. If you're looking for less frustration, better more realistic word sets, and more fun, look elsewhere. 4 stars for the puzzle and app mechanics and presentation, none for the egos creating the wordsets themselves.

I have used CrosswordLight for several years, it was once excellent but has failed to keep up with the technology. The important fro Dropbox function has had problems for a year and their “fix” was to remove the feature. The basic import function only imports one file at a time and does not import files in .jpz format. The Browse the Web function takes you a screen for buying Newsday puzzles and you cannot bypass it.

This crossword has the advantage of having a small-ish keyboard, leaving more room for the puzzle itself. It also has a nice way of shifting from 'down' to 'across' and vice versa by tapping on the clue. But it has some disadvantages that rule it out for me. I found it difficult to get intermediate grid sizes; the usual Mac way of enlarging and reducing by finger-spreading sometimes works smoothly and sometimes seems to have a long lag time. The total range of sizes is somewhat narrow. For example, I couldn't make the puzzle small enough to see the whole thing at once. Perhaps the feature that annoyed me the most is that if I started filling in a word in the middle of the word and then put a letter of the final square, CrosswordLight immediately jumped to the next clue, even though I hadn't filled in the beginning of the clue yet. Ideally, it would go to the beginning of the word to let me fill in the remaining letters. CrosswordLight also seems rather jittery; the grid has a tendency to move around a lot. I didn't find the navigation arrows helpful but some might. I also didn't find the magnifying glass helpful but, again, some might. I couldn't see a way to make the keyboard go away entirely. Maybe it's there and I just couldn't find it. Nor could I see a way to change the size of the clue font itself.

Well designed, with good controls, good layout and lots of puzzles to solve--some quite good, many with obscure pop artists' names. It also does have a flag if wrong setting, turns the letter red, so you'll know right away if you're on track.

The one major glitch? Even if you have "jump over filled squares" turned on, it still overwrites the first letter in a word! Thus, one is forever entering the correct letter, but CrosswordLight puts it into the wrong square and you end up having to backtrack. What could have been an amazing feature (and usually is for other letters in a word) is simply a repeating nuisance.

Next, it's all too often that you tap on a square on the left edge of the screen and end up back at the list of puzzles--a nuisance.

Finally, when you're done, it covers the screen and asks if you want to solve another--but that happens so quickly, you can no longer see the puzzle you just completed! Much better would be a simple message below the puzzle, so that you could keep on admiring your handiwork! (You can get back to the puzzle, but it requires several steps!)

I purchased CrosswordLight for both my iPhone and iPad. I later made an in-app purchase to upgrade them in order for them to sync with each other. It turns out that even though Stand Alone Inc. has no problem with taking your money, the feature is broken. In-app purchases do not work with this product and you’re stuck with having spent your money but getting nothing.

I’ve been emailing the vendor since January, who every month promises to fix the problem but never does. The latest e-mail was yesterday when, once again, they missed the date they stated they would have the new app in CrosswordLight Store.

My guess is they outsource the programming to another company and Stand Alone is just too cheap to fix the problem. NOTE: they’re not too cheap to take your money for a feature they know they can’t fulfill. And it’s been going on since the release of iOS 7.0.

I like CrosswordLight and the puzzles are great, but it’s clear that if you want the convenience of syncing CrosswordLight between your iPhone and iPad, or computer, the company just outright lies in claiming the in-app purchase will upgrade these apps with that capability.

The first few puzzles I did were challenging, but worked fine. It was easy to use and navigate. Based off of those, I'd give CrosswordLight 5 stars. But now all of a sudden it won't space itself out on the screen correctly. Half of the puzzle/clues are hidden under the keyboard, it won't scroll all the way down, I can't hide the keyboard, and the black navigation/clue bar is nowhere to be found (presumably also hidden under the keyboard). These issues have made it basically impossible to play, which makes me sad, because I'd really liked CrosswordLight before that.

Imagine this as a limited-time free app: you can play it through its thirty puzzles, and then it kind of becomes useless, unless you enjoy re-doing the same crossword puzzle. It is intended as a way to whet your appetite and get you to buy the paid app. Fair enough, no problem there--just be aware of the limitations.

The puzzles are definitely not NYT difficulty, but for me that works fine--at my level (relative novice), the puzzles are hard enough to challenge me, but not so easy as to make it worthless (YMMV). The design is OK, but there are a few small glitches or flaws. When you rotate, the animation freezes for a moment in mid-rotate (at least on my machine); not a biggie, but it does get annoying, as you have to rotate it a lot. In portrait mode, you can get hints, info, and clues, but I don't see an easy way to switch from horizontal to vertical. In landscape mode, you can switch between horizontal and vertical, but you can't get info, clues, or hints. So if you want any combinations, you gotta rotate fairly often.

Other than that, it's great. The keyboard is easy to use, and the puzzle squares surprisingly easy to select. There are a few more features I'd probably want to ask for if I bought the main version, but nothing that would stop me from buying CrosswordLight , really. I'm just not *that* big a crossword fan.

I love the Crossword Light app, and I use it every day.

I thought I would try the free version and was prepared to be disappointed. There were many negative reviews. That was a mistake. This is a terrific crossword game. Many of the reviews here are misleading, and there is a need to set the record straight. Several are complaining about typos and misspellings, layer/later, for example. People, they were misspelled on purpose. It was part of the game. I won't reveal the trick here, but one of the clues gives it away. Take a hint from the title. Those who are complaining about the clues are apparently not ready for a more challenging game. Regarding "unibrowbeater," think unibrow/browbeater. Get it? This is a classic construct in crosswords. Finally, for the complaints about the small keyboard, check your settings. You can make it bigger. From an experienced crossworder, I recommend CrosswordLight . Good luck to everyone with this fine crossword series.

These puzzles are tough! The beginner puzzles are a great match for me (and I thought I was pretty good!). If you're used to puzzles from in-flight magazines, these will be too hard - the beginner level puzzles in CrosswordLight are early-week NYT level. Personally I've finished all the ones I've started so far with help on the last few squares (avg. time 50 mins, best time 30 mins).
The leaderboard is a nice idea, but not sure about its integrity (puzzles that took me an hour solved in 1 min 45 sec - really???).
The interface is VERY well executed: easy toggling between Down & Across clues; rotate to landscape to display clue list in conventional format; pen vs. ink modes; wide range of hint options (from 'check this one box for errors' to 'reveal full puzzle').
Haven't downloaded new puzzles yet, so can't comment there (is it free?), but I'm thoroughly enjoying CrosswordLight so far. Like the mix of modern & archaic references. Get it!

The interface really makes or breaks a crossword game, since the puzzles themselves are merely crosswords, and can usually be loaded from external sources. This games interface is great. It displays the clue simultaneously with the puzzle; you can easily switch to another word on the puzzle using "next" and "previous" icons near the clue (and these button know whether you want the next horizontal or vertical word) or by clicking anywhere in the puzzle or by using gestures; when you type, the game auto-forwards the cursor into the next letter (again, knowing horizontal vs. vertical); it has a "Hints" mode, where you can see a list of all the clues and next to each is just the letters for that clue (including empty and filled in letters) - a fascinating new way to look at crosswords. It is a pleasure to play.

I don't think you can beat this for a free ap. The interface is very nice - you can zoom in and out, change how the clues are arranged, etc. You can start a new puzzle and go back to a previous one without losing any progress. The difficulty of most of the puzzles is moderate, which is my level. Other reviews complain of typos or mistakes, but I haven't seen any. If you're new to crosswords, you might prefer the EZ-30 series, which, as the name suggests, are quite a bit easier. I like these because I can get enough of the clues quickly to get started, and then I'll spend quite a bit of time on the trickier ones - the puns or longer words or obsure historical figures.

Yes! Found CrosswordLight was a good intro to Crossword puzzles for me. (A few more easy ones would be nice.) Love crossword puzzles on the ipad2 over the newspaper! If the puzzles are too tough (and you can sort be difficulty) then double-check your answers and delete the wrong letters, or ask for an answer - heck, you're just learning. It's very handy to have the questions instantly appear if you press on a square. I also got the NY Times app -- also good --but this one holds it's own no problem. The Interface is easy to learn, with few glitches. Creators, I've had hours of enjoyment with your puzzles -- thanks for the generosity on your free app!