USA TODAY Games: Crossword‪+‬ 4+

Sufficient but needs improvement

As of the last update, auto-moving to the next clue does not work properly; the cursor moves to the 2nd open box, not the first. This issue did not exist a couple of weeks ago. I am on a 3rd gen iPad Pro running IOS 16.1
Getting to unplayed archived puzzles is a waste of time. Users have to scroll down and wait for 20-some completed puzzles to load, and continue scroll and wait action until they get to an unplayed puzzle. Put a link to unplayed puzzles please.
Other than these two issues, it’s a good app.

Developer Response ,

Hi there,

Thanks for your feedback! This issue has been identified and we are working to resolve it as soon as possible.

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.

Worst Crossword App Imaginable

I love the USA Today crosswords, but this app is absolutely hideous to use. They need to study the New York Times crossword app and come up with something like that. You can use the 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 have to go back in and go through several menu selections to get back into the puzzle. That’s just the beginning of the hideous design. The moves from square to square within the app are ridiculous also. If you have a clue that has five boxes and you fill in the last two it should automatically go back up to the first empty box in the word. It doesn’t. When you’re finished with the puzzle and you want to find any errors, you have to toggle a switch. After you look at the errors, then you have to go back in and turn that toggle off or it will show errors on any future puzzles as you solve them if you make a mistake. If it wasn’t for the fact that I enjoy the puzzles, I wouldn’t use this app in a heartbeat.