USA Today Crossword Challenge

Rating Teen Genre puzzle Publisher Destineer

With the software entertainment industry’s current emphasis on un-games, it is becoming increasingly difficult to review and classify much of what is out there these days. How does one review something as abstract as yoga training applications or interactive recipes in the same manner as one would the latest Final Fantasy or Smash Bros? The casual gaming market has its own caveats as well. Though crosswords are indeed a form of puzzle game, it is very hard to qualify their electronic counterparts in the same way as other more traditional video games even those in the same ‘puzzle’ genre, such as Professor Layton or even Bust-a-Move.

With that said, USA Today Crossword Challenge is exactly what it sounds like: USA Today crossword puzzles, and challenging ones at that. If you love a good crossword challenge you will be right at home in this game’s collection of 300 puzzles. And if you are bilingual, even better! You can play 600 puzzles due to Destineer offering both the English and Spanish versions of the game on one cart. But, if you’re like me, having studied Latin instead, only half of the game’s content is available to you.

This game is bare-bones when it comes to game modes, though what it does have it does well. Crossword Challenge has a highly intuitive interface, offering both handwriting recognition and an on screen keyboard. I tend to prefer the handwriting recognition for its ease of use, but for those who are looking to beat their slower completion times, stick to the virtual keyboard as it’s much less likely the game will interpret their E’s as C’s when they are a letter apart. This game also made me realize that I am nowhere near as good at crossword puzzles as I thought I used to be. For schmucks like me, the game offers some respite in the form of a ‘hint’ button which reveals letters one by one. However, be careful when trying to best your scores as each letter revealed in this manner tacks on a hefty minute to your completion time. So use it sparingly.

USA Today Crossword Challenge is just what you’d expect from a handheld electronic version of USA Today’s crossword puzzles. There’s nothing here other than the puzzles, but they’re the meat of the genre anyway. For those who don’t go a day without scribbling little letters into the boxes of the puzzles in their local newspaper, this game is definitely worth buying. It will even save you some ink! But for those of you who view crosswords as some archaic casual pastime, you probably aren’t even reading this.