Puzzazz Blog  

One of the best things about Puzzazz is that it's a full-fidelity puzzle solving experience. When we say this, we mean that there's nothing missing from the puzzles -- what you get is as good or better than what you get when you solve on paper, both in the puzzle and in how we let you solve. We've talked a lot about the latter half with our TouchWrite handwriting recognition and all of the other puzzle-friendly and puzzle-focused features. The July 10th New York Times puzzle (shown below on iPad and iPhone) is a great opportunity to talk about the other aspect -- the puzzle itself.

I'll let Jim Horne, the guy behind the great XWord Info site and former blogger for the New York Times official WordPlay blog, set the stage:

"TouchWrite is cool but the best news here is that Puzzazz can handle all those strange and wonderful puzzle variations. As more and more fans solve electronically, Will and the other editors face a dilemma. Every time a new non-standard variation appears, the blogs fill up with heated comments from frustrated users who feel ripped off, but editors don’t want to limit the endless creativity that free-form paper-solving allows. Puzzazz goes a long way to making everyone happy."

In an unusual move, the variation in today's NYT crossword comes in the clues, not in the grid (click on a picture to see a full screen snapshot):

iPad:

iPhone:

I don't know about you, but I love innovations and twists as both a constructor and a solver. We've come a long way from the early days of crosswords (almost 100 years ago!) where every clue was a simple, straight definition. I'm not sure what made Will Shortz decide to include a picture in one of the clues of this puzzle, but I know it's fun. Everybody here at Puzzazz is proud to support whatever zigs and zags Will and his fellow editors are going to throw at us.

Enjoy!