USA Today Crosswords

by Destineer

Product Features

• Tackle 600 puzzles from the cruciverbalists (crossword enthusiasts) at USA Today
• Complete puzzles in either pencil or pen, depending on your level of confidence
• Challenge yourself to beat your best time using the in-game timer
• Input your answers using either the full QWERTY keyboard or using the game's handwriting recognition system

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0019C6KCK
• Item Weight: 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: July 14, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,644 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #54 in Video Games > Nintendo DS > Trivia

Product Description

What's a nine-letter word for fun? If you answered "crossword," you'll love USA Today Crossword Challenge, which brings all the challenging, vocabulary-driven entertainment of USA Today crossword puzzles to your Nintendo DS. Get your stylus ready for crossword fun that goes anywhere you do.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Decent puzzles, awful interface, September 25, 2008

By 

John Nolley II (Fairfax, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: USA Today Crosswords (Video Game)

I'm a fan of USAToday's crosswords, both in print and online. Their difficulty tends to fall between more generic crosswords and those of the New York Times; I can often work an entire puzzle without getting completely stumped, but I also do have to think about the answers and not just fill in the puzzle as quickly as I can write.

This game provides those crossword puzzles... but wow, the interface is so poor that it really, really hurts the game overall, making it in my opinion almost unplayable.

First, the whole puzzle can't be viewed at once; fine, any large enough puzzle isn't going to fit on the DS screen. But navigating around the puzzle is fairly tough; for example, I often found myself wanting to scroll a block of the puzzle into view with no easy way to do so.

Second, navigation is a bit weird. You use the "L" and "R" buttons on the DS to move through the puzzle (alternately, you can tap in a particular box to move to that answer). Going through the "across" clues, that's fine; you progress left-to-right, top-down, through the puzzle, just like if you were scanning through the numbered "across" clues in a printed puzzle. But, for no understanable reason, when you go through the "down" clues, the movement is top-down, THEN left-right; on a printed puzzle, this would mean going from clue 1-down to 15-down to 24-down then to 2-down, etc. It's simply not a natural way through the puzzle, either for solvers familiar with paper puzzles nor for quickly solving blocks of the puzzle (where once you've solved an "across" clue, it can help a lot to go through each "down" clue it affected).

The handwriting recognition is poor, too. It "takes" letters so quickly that I often found myself trying to complete a letter like an "T" or an "E" and having it cut me off before I could complete the cross-stroke on the letter. For what it's worth, it works on both upper- and lowercase letters, so I found myself using some of each based on which were easier to write and have the game recognize reliably. The QWERTY layout, as others have said, is in a poor font--I'm a touch typist, so I know the layout very well, but I often found myself hunting for a particular letter.

Visually, the puzzles could be laid out better; the blue blocks showing unused squares is a bit jarring and should have been black like in most printed (and online) puzzles.

The sound effects and music are annoying; you can turn the music off, but you have to turn the DS volume down to eliminate the noises it makes as you write or page through the puzzle.

Finally, the "completion" feature was annoying to use; I knew the last letter for the puzzle, yet the poor handwriting recognition kept recording it as the wrong letter--which would immediately take me to a "FAILED!" screen, where I had to go back and try correcting the letter to go forward.

All-in-all, I can't recommend this as a portable crossword game. The puzzles are ones I like (USA Today), but the interface just kills the game--and it shows in completion time; I can typically work a paper USA Today puzzle in 15-30 minutes, but the DS version took well over an hour per puzzle due to the poor interface.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interface Almost Ruined the Game, August 30, 2008

By 

Nuknuk (Springfield, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: USA Today Crosswords (Video Game)

Pros:
-You get the familiar crossword puzzles from USA Today. If you are a fan of that newspaper's puzzles, then that is the kind of questions and material you will get.

Cons:
-Interface is horrible. Definitely needs some improvement.
-The pad for handwriting recognition system is very small to write on.
-The QWERTY interface is also difficult to use. The font used are hard to recognize.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars better crossword puzzles, September 4, 2008

By 

J. Bankston "game player" (mississippi) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: USA Today Crosswords (Video Game)

I found this product to be acceptable but not exceptional. The puzzles are better than Crosswords DS which I found too easy, but they are not as difficult as the New York Times overall. The only problem I have with it is ease of use. There are some settings which are not easily understandable - pencil versus pen - and it's sometimes not easy to go back and change letters. Overall I am enjoying it but I sometimes get frustrated with it.