Exceptional customer service

I used to just get the 2 free puzzles a week. They offered a special deal for a year so I subscribed. I love crosswords and sudoku. Last week it wasn’t showing my subscription. I tried to sign in again and it wouldn’t sign in with google, but I could sign in online. It was just the app. I emailed support and they responded quickly and said they found the issue and fixed it. The problem continued and I emailed again. He said that if I using the games app to try the USA Today app and go to puzzles to see if it would work. And also try using a laptop and try the website. Or maybe it just needed a day to reset itself. I did all those things and it now works. The rep was very responsive and helpful and I really appreciated it. Thank you!

Worst Crossword App Imaginable

I love the USA Today crosswords, but this app needs some refinement. They need to study the New York Times crossword app and come up with something similar. You can use the NYT app off-line and you don’t need to have an Internet connection to use it. With the USA app, anytime you leave the puzzle, you need an internet connection to get back into the puzzle. The moves from square to square within the app are cumbersome also. If you have a clue that has five boxes and you fill in the last two it should automatically go back to the first empty box in the word. It doesn’t. It goes to the next empty space. Frequently when going back to a puzzle I’m working, the last four or five answers I put in the puzzle are gone and I have to redo them. No idea why. I have to push on a different square to get it to work Also, when a clue refers to another word in the puzzle, it should highlight that word so it’s easy to find. The numbers of the clues are so small that is very difficult to locate. If it wasn’t for the fact that I enjoy the puzzles, I wouldn’t use this app in a heartbeat. They really need to study the NYT app. It is absolutely phenomenal!

Buggy and slow

The most recent update removes the previous and next arrows to jump between clues. This makes navigating the puzzle very frustrating, especially when there doesn’t seem to be any logic behind what clue you end up on after completing one. Loading the puzzle archive takes forever, and it defaults to showing all puzzles instead of unplayed ones, so you have to select the option for only unplayed puzzles and then wait forever a second time. After I’ve completed a puzzle, if a start a second, more often than not I can’t type in the boxes. The keyboard acts like it’s working but no letters appear. I have to force close the app and restart it, then go though the slow multi-step process to get to a puzzle from the archive again. The puzzles themselves are pretty good but there can be a lot of word repetition from day to day. In difficulty, they’re roughly equal to a bit easier than an NYT Monday puzzle. It’s about right for me now, being a crossword newbie, but I feel like I might outgrow them in less than the timeframe of the one year subscription I purchased.

Good puzzles, app needs work

This app is so clunky. Get rid of the massive bar at the top and make it so I don’t have to scroll. I want to see the whole crossword. Sometimes the keyboard just disappears. I figured out a loophole to get it back by tapping on settings, and now this loophole is gone since the latest update. I have to exit the crossword and reopen it to get the keyboard to reappear. If that wasn’t frustrating enough, the app also doesn’t recognize when I finish a puzzle. I will again try opening and closing the puzzle which used to work but now I have to click the help button and “check puzzle” to know if It’s completed. Is this by design? It seemed to automatically show the “puzzle completed” screen once or twice when I first downloaded. Not saying you need to copy NYT format but please take some inspiration from them, because this is almost unusable.

Streaks and deadlines

I love the puzzle itself and have played daily for years. Here’s my beef: it’s unclear when the daily deadline is to submit in order to be counted in the player’s streak of completions. Some of us do find the streak count important as a personal challenge, and when I submit at 9 pm it should still be counted for that same day—particularly when the next day’s puzzle hasn’t been published yet. At the very least, make it known when the cutoff time is. I’ve tried and tried to guess it over the years based on personal experience. I solve in the mornings—except on days when life happens and I don’t sit down to my puzzles until the evening. It’s disheartening to know that I have not missed a puzzle in over 4 years and yet my current streak is all too often set back to 1. Please clarify!

A Good App Became So-So, Then Garbage

There was a time when this app was free for all to use instead of linking to the same puzzle on the web. Granted, this puzzle is always mediocre, whether in print or electronic format. Nothing v close to great puzzles like the NYTimes. Still, it was enjoyable to use and tracked your scores, encouraging you to play. One could play any game within the current month and more. The interface was friendly and easy to use. Sadly, the next generation reduced the number of games available to the current day, plus access to two previous days if those puzzles had been started. Moreover, the app added long, annoying advertising videos before the game each day… some far too long. Still free but very limited and less friendly. Puzzles remained mediocre. The most recent revision restricts users to 3 free crosswords per week, still with annoying ads. There is nothing about these puzzles worth paying a subscription!! The editors seem to be working under the illusion that they have an outstanding product to sell, which is nonsense. These puzzles are just quick to complete without requiring any deep thinking. I certainly won’t be subscribing and hope no one else does either. The manager in charge should be relieved of his puzzle duties. In summary… Don’t pay for a puzzle that is unchallenging and mediocre at best. If you are willing to pay for a puzzle, pay for a better one.

Developers don’t know what they’re doing?

What do you mean “performance improvements”? It’s very clear to me that, when I filter for unplayed puzzles, the app is loading page by page until it finds some. Every time. I’m playing puzzles from back in August and it takes literally over 30 seconds to load unplayed puzzles. Two suggestions. First, filter puzzles server-side. My phone should not be involved at all with the logic of displaying unplayed or incomplete puzzles. Second, just give me a “play next unplayed” button. There should be absolutely no reason for me to look at the archives, change to unplayed, then click the first item. It takes about a minute to find the next puzzle and about 5 for me to solve it. I swear some developers never use their own apps, or this would be painfully apparent from day one. I’ve canceled my subscription until they can make the app reasonably usable.

What happened???

A recent change to the puzzle has made it go from an A+ to a D-. On my iPad I could work just fine in landscape mode. Now the puzzle blank shrinks so much I can’t make out the squares clearly enough to see the number of letters in an answer, and the keyboard occupies the lower half of the screen leaving little room for clues. The only way to completely visualize the puzzle is to delete the keyboard, and that’s incredibly awkward! Portrait mode is a little better, but the puzzle is too big. Either the right half is partially cut off, with a space that only comes into view when typing an answer, after which the next line is cut off on the left. As one answers the Down clues, the puzzle rolls up, often eliminating upper squares of the next answer. Portrait mode is barely workable, the bugs create a massive slowdown, and I’m very uncomfortable with it. If not fixed soon, I will be unsubscribing.

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