Sunday, January 19, 2003
Review of Cruzoe Crossword 1.3
Posted by Tim Allen in "SOFTWARE" @ 06:00 PM
I'm addicted to the 'quick' crossword in our daily paper, but as my wife has the advantage of not working full time I rarely get first shot at it, which means I'm generally left with all the difficult clues. So when I decided to find a more personal solution, Cruzoe Crossword, from Canadian developer Pocco Software, looked like it might fit the bill.
Cruzoe Crossword 1.3 boasts the ability to randomly generate over one million different crosswords, hence the name - if you do end up on a desert island at least you'll never be short of a crossword to solve. Cruzoe does achieve this goal, but there are some inconsistencies and limitations to be aware of.
Where To Buy
The software can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for a very reasonable $13.99 (affiliate link). I understand from the developers that the price will include free upgrades to new versions of the program.
New Crossword Please
Each new crossword takes just a few seconds to create. The user interface is very clear and simple, allowing you to start playing straight away.
Figure 1: A new crossword ready to be solved
Unlike a traditional paper crossword where you can see all the clues together, Cruzoe maximises use of the available space on the Pocket PC screen by only showing the across and down clues for the currently selected cell on the board. As you select different cells using the stylus, the clues change accordingly.
One downside to this is that you don't get clue numbers; while strictly unnecessary given the design, I missed it. Another more serious omission, though, is the lack of letter counts after each clue, i.e. something like 'Missing (7)' rather than just 'Missing', leaving you to count the squares yourself.
Start Solving
Figure 2: Entering an answer
The answers are entered using any of the available input methods, with text starting from the selected cell and flowing in the direction indicated by the highlighted arrow on the menu bar.
Unfortunately all the standard input panels cover both clues, meaning you can't leave them up permanently. Cruzoe does provide an 'Auto Hide Keyboard' option but inevitably this doesn't automatically re-display the panel when you're ready to enter an answer.
None of this is a problem if you use Transcriber, which doesn't cover the clues, but you must remember to de-select the 'Add space after' setting in Transcriber to avoid the last letter of your entered word being erased. I confess I didn't discover this tip myself - in fact I initially thought it was a bug in Cruzoe but was politely put right by a swift response from the Pocco support team.
Figure 3: A summary of the clues showing which have been solved
There are separate 'Across' and 'Down' tab pages, which show all the respective clues in simple lists together with an indication of which ones have been solved correctly so far. Selecting one of the clues here automatically takes you back to the board tab with the relevant cells highlighted. However I didn't find this very useful and spent most of my time on the main 'Board' page.
Give Us A Clue
The clues in Cruzoe are all of the non-cryptic kind, being mostly synonyms of verbs and nouns. There are no anagrams, nor clues on other subjects typically found in newspaper crosswords such as literature or geography.
Whilst this may sound limiting, I was actually looking for a crossword of the 'quick' variety rather than one that might take hours to solve. However, on the whole I found the clues fairly difficult, and certainly much more so than my benchmark - the quick crossword in The Times (UK newspaper).
In many cases the clue or answer were either obscure words (e.g. 'aegir', 'nucha', 'chine', 'yagis'), or didn't seem to match each other (e.g. clue 'hitch' had answer 'limps', clue 'leaflet' had answer 'cusps', clue 'moan' had answer 'tears' and clue 'big' had answer 'elder'). These examples were all in just three consecutive crosswords.
Most human-compiled crosswords tend to have a personality; as you do more and more puzzles written by the same person you become more and more familiar with the author's style and thought process, which makes deciphering the clues easier. Unfortunately the clue/answer inconsistencies result in Cruzoe lacking this 'feel', although it may become more apparent after many crosswords have been completed.
Cheat Modes
Figure 4: Cruzoe indicating mistakes, and the fill options
A nice feature you don't get with a paper crossword is the 'Show Mistakes' option. With this selected Cruzoe will highlight answers that are incorrect, which allows you to try out different solutions without giving away the answer.
If you really get stuck - and you probably will - you can ask for a letter or even a whole word to be filled in for you.
Both of these options are extremely useful but I found I had to use them far more often than I would have liked. I would have preferred for these to be used as a last resort, rather than being a necessary aid to get anywhere near to completing a crossword.
Other Options
Figure 5: Changing the cell colors
Cruzoe allows you to change the color of things like the cell text and background, although I found the default colors perfectly acceptable.
Gotchas
• Aside from the clue problems mentioned previously, Cruzoe lacks many of the options and configuration settings typically found on other games.
• You can't change the difficulty level, so you're stuck with the default which is fine if it matches your own abilities, but fairly limiting if it doesn't.
• You can't change the size or layout of the board and there's virtually no variation in the default board either, it's also really four small crosswords joined by only four or five clues - virtually all clue intersections are at the start or end of a word, rather than at the second letter or last letter but one.
• There's no save/load facility, so if you stop Cruzoe you lose your current crossword.
Conclusions
The measure of success for any game is whether it keeps you coming back for more, and a key factor in this is how closely the level of difficulty matches, or can be tuned to match, your own ability. I found Cruzoe erring too much on the hard side, although I don't consider myself a crossword expert.
Overall though, if you're after an unlimited crossword generator without the bells and whistles and can live with the difficulty level and clue/answer inconsistencies, then for the price I recommend you give Cruzoe a try.
Cruzoe Crossword 1.3 boasts the ability to randomly generate over one million different crosswords, hence the name - if you do end up on a desert island at least you'll never be short of a crossword to solve. Cruzoe does achieve this goal, but there are some inconsistencies and limitations to be aware of.
Where To Buy
The software can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for a very reasonable $13.99 (affiliate link). I understand from the developers that the price will include free upgrades to new versions of the program.
New Crossword Please
Each new crossword takes just a few seconds to create. The user interface is very clear and simple, allowing you to start playing straight away.
Figure 1: A new crossword ready to be solved
Unlike a traditional paper crossword where you can see all the clues together, Cruzoe maximises use of the available space on the Pocket PC screen by only showing the across and down clues for the currently selected cell on the board. As you select different cells using the stylus, the clues change accordingly.
One downside to this is that you don't get clue numbers; while strictly unnecessary given the design, I missed it. Another more serious omission, though, is the lack of letter counts after each clue, i.e. something like 'Missing (7)' rather than just 'Missing', leaving you to count the squares yourself.
Start Solving
Figure 2: Entering an answer
The answers are entered using any of the available input methods, with text starting from the selected cell and flowing in the direction indicated by the highlighted arrow on the menu bar.
Unfortunately all the standard input panels cover both clues, meaning you can't leave them up permanently. Cruzoe does provide an 'Auto Hide Keyboard' option but inevitably this doesn't automatically re-display the panel when you're ready to enter an answer.
None of this is a problem if you use Transcriber, which doesn't cover the clues, but you must remember to de-select the 'Add space after' setting in Transcriber to avoid the last letter of your entered word being erased. I confess I didn't discover this tip myself - in fact I initially thought it was a bug in Cruzoe but was politely put right by a swift response from the Pocco support team.
Figure 3: A summary of the clues showing which have been solved
There are separate 'Across' and 'Down' tab pages, which show all the respective clues in simple lists together with an indication of which ones have been solved correctly so far. Selecting one of the clues here automatically takes you back to the board tab with the relevant cells highlighted. However I didn't find this very useful and spent most of my time on the main 'Board' page.
Give Us A Clue
The clues in Cruzoe are all of the non-cryptic kind, being mostly synonyms of verbs and nouns. There are no anagrams, nor clues on other subjects typically found in newspaper crosswords such as literature or geography.
Whilst this may sound limiting, I was actually looking for a crossword of the 'quick' variety rather than one that might take hours to solve. However, on the whole I found the clues fairly difficult, and certainly much more so than my benchmark - the quick crossword in The Times (UK newspaper).
In many cases the clue or answer were either obscure words (e.g. 'aegir', 'nucha', 'chine', 'yagis'), or didn't seem to match each other (e.g. clue 'hitch' had answer 'limps', clue 'leaflet' had answer 'cusps', clue 'moan' had answer 'tears' and clue 'big' had answer 'elder'). These examples were all in just three consecutive crosswords.
Most human-compiled crosswords tend to have a personality; as you do more and more puzzles written by the same person you become more and more familiar with the author's style and thought process, which makes deciphering the clues easier. Unfortunately the clue/answer inconsistencies result in Cruzoe lacking this 'feel', although it may become more apparent after many crosswords have been completed.
Cheat Modes
Figure 4: Cruzoe indicating mistakes, and the fill options
A nice feature you don't get with a paper crossword is the 'Show Mistakes' option. With this selected Cruzoe will highlight answers that are incorrect, which allows you to try out different solutions without giving away the answer.
If you really get stuck - and you probably will - you can ask for a letter or even a whole word to be filled in for you.
Both of these options are extremely useful but I found I had to use them far more often than I would have liked. I would have preferred for these to be used as a last resort, rather than being a necessary aid to get anywhere near to completing a crossword.
Other Options
Figure 5: Changing the cell colors
Cruzoe allows you to change the color of things like the cell text and background, although I found the default colors perfectly acceptable.
Gotchas
• Aside from the clue problems mentioned previously, Cruzoe lacks many of the options and configuration settings typically found on other games.
• You can't change the difficulty level, so you're stuck with the default which is fine if it matches your own abilities, but fairly limiting if it doesn't.
• You can't change the size or layout of the board and there's virtually no variation in the default board either, it's also really four small crosswords joined by only four or five clues - virtually all clue intersections are at the start or end of a word, rather than at the second letter or last letter but one.
• There's no save/load facility, so if you stop Cruzoe you lose your current crossword.
Conclusions
The measure of success for any game is whether it keeps you coming back for more, and a key factor in this is how closely the level of difficulty matches, or can be tuned to match, your own ability. I found Cruzoe erring too much on the hard side, although I don't consider myself a crossword expert.
Overall though, if you're after an unlimited crossword generator without the bells and whistles and can live with the difficulty level and clue/answer inconsistencies, then for the price I recommend you give Cruzoe a try.
