App Profile: Knotwords

Palpador Lupador

Rating: 5/5

What I love about this game are the times the puzzles are simple enough that I can solve then using an intuitive technique where I make quick guesses about letters around the board and then work the puzzle out in nice big chunks until I bring it all together for a speedy, satisfying finish. But as the puzzles get harder throughout the week, it gets harder to play using that method. The game becomes more and more about agonizing over something specific, and the joy just gets sucked right out of it. Sometimes I'm even reduced to asking for a hint...talk about depressing. It's like it's not even the same game by the time Sunday comes around. I've stopped even trying to play harder puzzles. My rating is based only on the part I enjoy.

Daryl Zero

Rating: 2/5

I lost a streak because the app just sat there as I was tapping on the damned button to load and finally gave up and killed it. It often stops mid animation. I thought it would get back to reasonable, but it’s really terrible at responding to taps in a timely manner. Sometimes my first or second word. I keep tapping a letter until it finally registers at least two of that letter when I wanted one. The dictionary is terrible. So many bad definitions and word forms that make no sense. It says AMIDS is a word. The definition is “Plural of AMID”—a preposition. Look up DATUM in a real dictionary, the plural form is DATA, not DATUMS. It hurts the game when you have to try nonsense “words” because the dictionary is garbage. Maybe a button to report bogus words so you can build an exclusion list. In addition to being slow, the UI is overloaded. How do you select a word to solve? Slapping the cell might choose across when you want down. You’re supposed to drag down. But large puzzles make for small cells, dragging as you select tends to drag the whole grid and/or select the wrong cell. Look at crossword puzzle apps, they all have a button on or above the keyboard. Desperately needs a way to cancel the share process. It takes a very long time to render the gif and I have only ever tapped that by accident.

AllieFl

Rating: 4/5

I really enjoy this game! It’s very challenging, but soluble with persistence. Haven’t used any hints yet! There are some things that need improvement, though. The spelling is off sometimes. Sometimes an “s” is added to a word that doesn’t take one - for example “ares” - maybe it’s meant to be Ares, the god of war - but this would break the general rule of word games that they don’t use proper names. There are also some verbs that an “s” is added to, but which don’t have this form. The most annoying one is in May Puzzle Book #23 in which all my words check positive except for ax! Ax is the currently accepted spelling (not axe). I’m also find how the active blank space in a word is shown in the puzzle (I’m playing on an iPad Pro). The color of the space is a darker hue than the other spaces, but the contrast is not good enough to make it obvious which space the letter you enter will go in. It would be better if the active space was another color altogether. These annoyances don’t take away from the overall game, but I should would like to see them fixed!