Knotwords in IOS

★★★★★

★★★★★ Hasn’t been responsive since v1.0

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.

★★★★★ Improvements needed

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!

★★★★★ A nearly perfect game you aren’t allowed to play.

I really like this game, controls are intuitive, concept is well thought out and even better executed, the presentation is nothing less than what I’ve come to expect from Zach Gage games. All that said, I think 12 dollars (or a subscription service) is a little steep for a mobile game. I beat every available puzzle and daily puzzle up until this review in just under a day. I’d at least like the option to maybe watch ads to continue playing or unlock other content. Even if the cost were only .99 cents I’d have a hard time giving this a 5 because (so far) all the puzzles are time locked (so daily/monthly levels rather than everything all at once) which still would mean that I wouldn’t be allowed to play once I beat the paid content. I really like supporting smaller devs and I’ve enjoyed every single other Zach Gage game almost to its fullest but this sitting next to the almost infinite levels of Good Sudoku

★★★★★ The game is good 👍

I truly enjoy this game and find it very fun. It’s a great way to start each day with a mini and classic challenge but I agree with many of the other reviews. Text input (and backspacing) seems to be very unintuitive and a bit disruptive with where it chooses to go. Also, the subscription/full price is a bit steep though I do understand… it’s interesting that you only get the first 10 puzzles for the month but I guess that keeps you coming back more for the daily puzzles. Speaking of wish, I really wish we got to do just 1 twisty puzzle a day. Additional tidbits - Don’t like double tapping to get into puzzles. Wish we could silence the rabbit. Would love to see what the color/theme options are as well as what the Daily Twist looks like before throwing up a pay screen. I would never buy something I can’t see or test out first. Finally, sharing to Facebook only shares a link to the game, unlike Twitter which shares a picture of the puzzle (preferable) 🧩

★★★★★ Great game but..

This game is fun and challenging. My only complaint is the flow is not smooth. You think you are typing one direction for a word but the game jumps to the wrong box. So you end up having to tap the game a lot to get to the box you want or delete a lot. It’s clumsy at least in my hands. I have tried all the settings as well and none are perfect. I would say it is similar to a crossword with the across and down but in most crosswords, you tap the word you are working on- if it’s the wrong direction, you tap again and it then it switches directions and stays that way. This game, you have to keep taping the next box you have to fill in some cases. It’s frustrating. Also, for the bigger puzzles, a clear button would be great cause deleting every entry runs into what I described above and can be cumbersome. Going to still play cause it’s fun but potential improvement?

★★★★★ Mostly great

I really like this game. I played Wordscapes, but it got too repetitive and predictable. I like how the puzzles are simple on Monday and get harder throughout the week. I don’t play much Scrabble, so some words are challenging. I also really, really appreciate that you can make up for broken streaks. I only wish there was better review of the words. I can accept “hes” as a contraction lacking an apostrophe, but I have issues with “tomatos”. Seems to me to be a misspelled plural rather than, maybe, a possessive form? The added “e” wouldn’t have impacted the rest of the puzzle at all. There was no excuse for “fibia” in a body parts puzzle. Nope, not a body part, or anything else. Even my funky autocorrect knows better. The lower bones of the leg are tibia and fibula, folks! I will definitely keep playing. Glitches are very rare, and enjoyment is frequent.

★★★★★ Love this game!

I love this game and have been playing it daily for basically two years now. If you like crosswords but struggle with the cryptic clues, check this game out! Basically, anything by Zach Gage is guaranteed to twist your expectations in a fun new way, and I eagerly await every release. Also, the share function that creates a gif of my progress (or struggle) is hilarious and even better to share when it’s awful than when it’s great. 😅 I’ve got a couple of small quality of life improvements I’d like to see, but will still gladly play for years to come! Loading puzzles seems to take a while, and randomly stall for a moment early in the first puzzle. I’d like a way to migrate my progress to Knotwords+ so that I can get the hidden achievements without starting over Some of the puzzle book categories get very repetitive, like the flower and clothing and transportation categories. However, I love the short words and vowel puzzles and wish there were more. When browsing the archive, I’d love a button that takes you instantly to your newest incomplete puzzle, so I don’t have to scroll past 36 months of finished puzzles to find the next one.