Monkey Wrench Reviews

The game is good,challenging, and enjoyable. My dislike is that when playing the daily free puzzle, I cannot turn off the sound in the ad. Sometimes it just isn’t appropriate to have sound, such as when in a waiting room, or on a line, or in any public place. Please allow us to turn off all sounds.

Also the ads are way too long for an app. Check out the way the Solitaire app does ads. I actually look at those ads. These are too loud and too long. So if I am going to play the free puzzles, I turn the sound off on my phone, tap on the daily free puzzle, put the phone down and walk away. When I come back I play the game. So the long ads have made me totally ignore them. Plus I rarely play the game anymore because of the ads.

Recently MonkeyWrench has started to override my silent mode again. The first free game I play is silent, then after it runs an ad, the next game has sound, which I don’t want. Sometimes ads don’t load properly and I have a black screen until I restart the ap. The sound thing has been a persistent problem but the ad crashes are new. Some ads don’t actually conclude at all, just sit there until I restart the ap. This is all making it less and less worth playing the game.

I still play the game and have purchased a few puzzle packs. But between the ridiculous 30-second ads in the daily puzzles and what seems like a lack of effort to come up with decent puzzle answers, I’m really disappointed. Current example of the laziness in puzzle answers is from the June 23 daily puzzle. Ready?
People from 1950s history: Patsy Cline, Gene Autry, and Jack Webb.
How is that “history”? That is entertainment, not history! This is not an isolated example, and has become more frequent. This is really low-effort puzzle building.

Please lose the obnoxious ads and put some decent effort back into your puzzles. I just can’t see buying any more puzzle packs if the developer won’t make an effort on their end.

I’ve loved this game for a long time, and have often reinstalled it. However, the ads in the daily puzzles often lead me to delete it. I live daily challenges, but this game doesn’t ask if I wish to watch an ad, or give me the option to go back to the main page to skip bonus puzzles. As soon as I finish the daily puzzle, even if I hit the ‘x”, BAM ad and the bonus puzzle.

It would be awesome to either opt out of the bonus puzzles and go back home without it automatically playing, or an option to buy and remove ads forever (an option I generally pay for on my most played games).

I like the diversity in the categories in this game, but some of the answers I think are a stretch. For example, one of the categories was “movies about slavery” and the answer was “Planet of the Apes.” Now I see how that could fit if I really think about it, but it makes it extremely unsatisfying to figure out the answer when it just feels so...out of place. Another example is today, one of the categories was “famous biologists” and the answer was “Jane Goodall,” who is not a biologist. I just think this would be a more satisfying experience overall if the answers in the categories did not feel so random.

I love MonkeyWrench but tonight adds shows up across the. Bottom and blocks the letters to solve the puzzle. Please remove that! Five stars without that ad. Zero stars with it because you can’t solve it. Again, I am begging you! I can’t play when there is an add across the grid!!!

Please do not allow ads to block the puzzle making it impossible to do the puzzle!! Tonight it is an ad for Uberdelivery. I will have to quit MonkeyWrench if I am unable to work on of my favorite apps.

I love this game. And when I say that, I mean I LOVE this game. I have literally purchased every available new game pack (except the dailies, but that’s just because I play them nearly every day while I wait for new packs to become available).

So, why only 4 stars?

Since the new pack, “Sugarcane,” has become available I’ve been unable to play it. I made my purchase, but it still shows the price and won’t allow me to open it. I’ve attempted to purchase it again, thinking there was a glitch in the purchase, but it tells me it’s already been purchased and will be restored for free. The wrench then proceeds to spin...until it doesn’t and the game freezes forcing me to close MonkeyWrench . I powered down my phone and restarted. No change. I even tried to offload MonkeyWrench and reinstall, but it still just shows me that $1.99 instead of making the pack available to play.

This is truly my favorite word game on my phone (obviously). Please help me be able to play again.

Love the word game and have used it for you’re a while now. My only beef is the ads. Normally not too intrusive but one recent ad that comes up is probably not good for a family oriented game. The x map for hunting app is probably not appropriate in light of the recent gun violence and political controversy. The same company produces trip and hiking maps and could promote those instead. I am not against safe hunting but I do not believe anything to do with guns should be promoted by your games. Please reconsider the advertising.

One thing I don’t like about this game and all other Blue Ox games is that in order to stop ads, you have to pay monthly. All my other daily games allowed me to pay a one time charge, usually around $1.99. Also, I keep getting blank screens that never come up with an ad. I have to go out of the game and restart for the ad to work. This is happening regularly not only with this game but 7 Little Words, which is also a Blue Ox game.

Love this game. Been playing a long time. However since the last update the game is unstable. Daily puzzle Freezing and automatically opening the bonus puzzle. You can play the bonus puzzle but not the daily unless you repeatedly close MonkeyWrench and reopen it but that doesn’t always work. Same goes for Monkey Wrench
Seems others are having same issue. PLEASE FIX

I recently had a glitch in which MonkeyWrench would crash when I tried to open a newly purchased pack of puzzles. I emailed support and they worked for a couple days to try to fix it. In the end, they weren’t able to, but gifted me 5 packs for my trouble. I was impressed by how quickly they replied to my emails and how they handled the situation.

Play this every day. Only wish there were more puzzles per day available or the ability to access a large group of puzzles. There used to be another Monkey Wrench icon that was blue that had numerous puzzles available but I guess you stopped supporting it because it disappeared some time ago. Keep up the great work. This game is awesome.

Have had this game on my phone for several years and I really enjoy playing it. Recently I bought an iPad and added Monkey Wrench on it. I now do all my game playing on my iPad. But Monkey Wrench is totally unstable on the iPad. I have to reload it each day, then after a couple of games it freezes up again. Guess I will have to look for a different word search game.

Part of my daily dose of critical thinking to keep my brain sharp.
I like that it has three levels of difficulty and lets me choose which one I want to use. Begin at “easy” to get the feel of the game. Move to regular mode until comfortable with your guesses. Now, after years of play, I only choose hard mode and that is just the maximum complexity I need for the game to be challenging yet still fun.
As with their Red Herring game, I also find that I sometimes want to search the web to understand why a word I guessed was correct. That keeps we learning about aspects I life I may never had thought about.
Simply UI. They don’t mess around with unnecessary updates that would ruin a perfectly made game like other free apps.

Since the last update, I am unable to play. Every puzzle results in the message: sorry there is something wrong with the puzzle. This has been a favorite game with me for years. Please fix it.
*UPDATE* This no longer worked after upgrading to iPadOS14 and updating MonkeyWrench . In desperation I deleted MonkeyWrench and reinstalled it. Works fine now. I play this game every day and have been doing so for a few years.

I too love the game and have purchased puzzle packs. However, for the past week, I have been seeing an ad after I play the daily game. I am one of those people who will generally buy the privilege to not see ads, but this is not even a choice! I did notice the choice is offered for the express version of your game, so perhaps I will switch to that - as I have done for seven little words app. In general, I think the games that are most successful at using this model are those that offer an opt out option, or, ask you if you want to watch an ad BEFORE the bonus is given.

I love word games and this one is excellent. It's easy to start and hard to walk away from. And it has become part of my daily routine. My only criticisms are that I agree that the categories could be more interesting, but more importantly, the answers should be correct. Whoever creates the categories needs to check the answers a little more thoroughly. Hello Dolly is not a Gene Kelly movie. Nor was Tim Robbins in Twister. Other than that I highly recommend the game.

I have played your game daily for years and really enjoy it. However over the past few months I am finding ads that do NOT end. I just got stuck with the Air Brush App. I watched the subject deleted from the man on the street, the two extra people in the field with the little girl, the grey goose and partial white one disappear 10 times, each time tapping DONE only to be returned to watch the uninteresting series again and again. Do I need to provide the definition of the word “DONE?”

Are these ads not tested? The ridiculous time involved is one thing, but the lack of consideration for those like me who
have Parkinson’s and hand disabilities is disturbing.

Unfortunately if this ad problem continues, your game, which as I said before is a great game, and anything else from
your group will need to be deleted.

Thank you for listening.

All of a sudden I can’t access it unless I agree/disagree to have my info marketed.
I did not agree and it pops up a ‘thank you’ for agreeing. I had to contact the company they use and I can’t delete my info as I don’t have google ads. I was just asked by Apple if I wanted to update this. Apparently I’ll still receive ads that aren’t targeted. I’d still rather have that than give them more info about me. Also, I had to contact the ad mngmt company to find out how to remove the notice so I could access the game. It took a few steps including downloading another app! If you’re not tech savvy it could be very frustrating.

I have been playing this game every day since MonkeyWrench was available. Love it. I have no problems with crashing, bugs, ads etc. Please don't discontinue MonkeyWrench . I would even pay a small one time fee to continue playing.....and that is saying a lot since I rarely find the need to purchase an app.