Crossword puzzle with friends archive#
Crossword puzzle with friends crack#

“What I would recommend is doing it in a group and talking to people about it – that is how you learn it and come to enjoy it,” says Hugh Stephenson, one of the aforementioned two crossword editors. Fortunately there are blogs that can help you on your way. This is a whole new lexicon to be learned, where the word “first” might mean “take the first letter of the next word”, or the word “upset” might mean “jumble the letters of the adjacent words around”. You will recognise the words as being English, but strung together they generally make little sense. (I once set crosswords and wrote headlines for a living at the same time, and felt there was a delicious overlap between the two disciplines.)Īt first glance, a cryptic crossword may be a disconcerting experience. And for someone who works with words, I always feel that a completed crossword grid is like limbering up for a day at the coalface. They are supposedly good for preserving an agile brain into one’s advancing years. Individual setters have their own style that takes a while to figure out, but which then becomes the basis of a silent conversation that you have, back and forth, over months. Ours are a paean to an ever-evolving language. But the Guardian prefers a more modern approach. In other papers, crosswords tend to refuse to move with the times (in one, setters are banned from using the names of real people in answers unless they are dead). But at their best, they are an art form with a whole subculture of their own, an hour of delicious diversion riddled with deliberate attempts to confuse and deflect, like a good whodunnit or a difficult child. The app has been tested with some of the Guardian’s best-loved setters, who have assisted the development process.Ĭrosswords may look like ancient things to be fussed at with bitten pencils in hospital waiting areas. An external partner, Amuse Labs, helped develop the product, coming up with a prototype within two days. “It’s come together in less than six months,” said David Blishen, the product manager for the app. And all this for £3.49 a month (or £32.99 a year).

They can also play against the clock, brag about their mental agility by sharing how quickly they solved a grid, and even cheat by revealing the answers (though not on prize puzzles).

Crossword puzzle with friends crack#

Solvers will be able to join forces remotely to crack a puzzle with the app’s “play together” feature. New crosswords will be added once published.

Crossword puzzle with friends archive#

She said that a total of 15,000 puzzles from a 20-year archive would be available on the app, including five different levels of sudokus and other brain teasers. “We have a very big, loyal crossword audience and we wanted to give them another way to support our journalism,” said Savannia Flynn-Naidoo, head of operations for corporate development at Guardian Media Group.