I'm not the biggest crossword person. I love word games and trivia, but crosswords have just never grabbed me. So I'm a little surprised by how much I've enjoyed playing CRUX Crosswords HD [4.99].

Maybe it's the way it manages to capture the feel of playing on paper without all the messy stuff that goes along with actually playing on paper. You can't beat the aesthetic, with each puzzle laid out on a page of virtual newsprint with a nice clean handwritten font. I can almost smell the ink when playing this game.

Or maybe it's all the helpful little features. You can write in pencil or pen mode, so you know which answers you're certain about and which are still iffy. When you highlight a cell, you can see both the clues that intersect it at a glance. If you're getting close but can't pick an answer, use the rebus option to enter up to twelve options per cell. If you're really hard up, you can set the game to double-check your answers or reveal cells, entries, or the whole shebang. That saved me from a shameful trip to Google on a few occasions.

As a newbie, the source list mystifies me a bit. CRUX has a list of nearly 30 sources, split between U.S. and U.K. style puzzles. A few (those from New York Times and Telegraph) require subscriptions to their respective crossword services, which is to be expected. But I'd love to see a little more information on the sources. Are People Magazine puzzles more or less difficult than Onion A.V. Club puzzles? Or Washington Post puzzles? It's pretty much trial and error for me, but if you know your stuff, the hearty source list should be quite satisfying.

You can download each puzzle as it's published online, and once you've got it its yours to keep. A recent puzzles list lets you hop between in-progress or recently downloaded puzzles at will. You can also create user profiles if more than one member of your household has the crossword bug.

Every time I ran into an irritation, a few moments of investigation solved it for me. I was frustrated that the game would skip over already completed cells when I typed in a full entry. Turns out you can toggle that option off. If the timer makes you feel a little too pressured, turn it off too. There are almost too many ways to navigate each puzzle—you can tap on a cell, tap on a clue, swap between intersecting clues, or use the on screen direction pad to move between cells. You can also set CRUX to show only incomplete clues or only those that intersect your current selection. I have yet to run into a feature or convenience I felt was missing, but if you do, the developers have been taking feedback in the forums.

Like I said, I'm a crossword newbie. But CRUX Crosswords HD is pro. It looks fantastic and comes with everything but the kitchen sink packed in to make your crossword solving more convenient. If you enjoy crosswords, you should definitely give it a shot.

In late April, we took a look at Prose With Bros [$1.99 / Free] and were totally impressed by the incredibly unique idea behind the game. Evil Laugh Games successfully turned magnetic poetry into an asynchronous online multiplayer game, complete with players judging the best phrases put together by players.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side of the fence you're on, the game quickly turned into non-stop sexual euphemisms. Initially, they were amusing, but quickly grew fairly tiring for me as everyone I played with seemed to attempt to string together nonsensical nastiness. Will an injection of 300 new words to the game solve this problem? It's hard to say, but it seems worth updating regardless.

And hey, if weird sexual euphemisms with anonymous strangers on the Internet is your cup of tea, you just got 300 new pieces of innuendo ammo!

Word game aficionados, allow me to draw your attention to a freebie you don't want to pass by. 7 Little Words [Free] is a new word game from the creator of Moxie [99¢ / Free] and Moxie 2 [$1.99]. Those games picked up big followings over time, and this should be no different.

7 Little Words uses a super-simple formula that works really well. It feels a bit like a crossword or anagram game, and it's got me pretty hooked. Each puzzle presents you with seven clues for seven mystery words, and twenty two- or three-letter combinations. Put the letter combos together to make words that fit the clues. Your goal in each puzzle is to use up all the letters to create seven words.

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Words With Friends [2.99 / Free / HD] has dominated the multiplayer word game genre on the app store for a long time, but recently some new competitors have elbowed their way in: Kalimat [$2.99 / Free] and Wordfeud [Free]. We've loved Words With Friends since way back when, but it can't hurt to see what the competition has to offer.

Both games are Scrabble-style word games with asynchronous multiplayer - Kalimat through OpenFeint, and Wordfeud through its own system. Both also have free, ad-supported versions to try (Kalimat's cripples some features). But there are a few things that set these games apart from each other.

Wordfeud beat Words With Friends to Android earlier this year and then made its way to the App Store. It's not pretty, with its muted colors and plain interface, but it's quick. I ran into a few small bugs, but nothing game breaking. Currently, it supports six dictionaries, including Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and both English tournament dictionaries (TWL and SOWPODS).

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Surely you're one of the eighty zillion people who have downloaded and played Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] with friends, family, coworkers, and random weirdos you don't even know. It's a great game that I can't possibly recommend enough, despite the fact that it was recently assimilated into the Zynga borg. If you dig these kinds of asynchronous online multiplayer word games and are looking for a new fix, you've really got to give Prose With Bros [$1.99 / Free]. It follows a similar model as Words With Friends with a fully functional ad-supported version of the game that you can try first, along with an entirely optional $1.99 ad-free version for people who prefer tossing out a couple bucks to being inundated with advertising.

So what's Prose With Bros all about? Well, if the blatantly obvious title didn't give it away, you form prose, with your bros. Each player is given the same set of words, and they've got to string them together in the most amusing way possible. You submit your prose, and a panel of bros judge your work over the next day. Whoever gets more votes wins. Check out this exhaustive walkthrough the developers provided us:

I'm not entirely sure if Prose With Bros will have the insanely long lasting appeal that Words With Friends has had, but if you like silly multiplayer word games, there's really no reason to not download the free version and give it a spin.

While I'm not the retro overlord our own Blake Patterson is, I've always thought it would be super cool to have a cocktail arcade machine. Even though the iPad doesn't have the 30 years worth of pizza grease on it like your typical Pac-Man cocktail table would have, the iPad is a surprisingly good substitute when it comes to face to face single device multiplayer. Where am I going with all this? Well, Super Cosmic Word Snake [$2.99] combines so many things I like in an iPad game it's almost like 3V Games built their game off some design document of mine that I haven't even created yet. It's dripping with retro charm, has simple (but incredibly fun) two player single device multiplayer, and even has Game Center.

To start playing, you need to situate the iPad between you and a friend and flip a coin (or somehow determine) who is going to play which side first. As the first player, you're responsible for growing the super cosmic word snake as much as possible. Adding body segments on to the end of said snake is as simple as hitting the 7 letter buttons at the bottom of the screen to make a word. The first letter of the word you form must start with the last letter of the worm itself. The snake then, well, snakes around the screen towards the opposite side.

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Here at GDC 2011 I sat down with Gian Cruz from Feel Every Yummy to check out their new game WordFighter. Basically WordFighter is a word game like Boggle or Scrabble with an added fighting game component layered on top. Players will “fight” each other by creating words from a 5x5 grid of letters over 3 timed rounds. Each letter has a point value and the total value of created words determines the damage dished out to your opponent. As you create more words you’ll earn special bonuses to use which vary amongst the planned 6 characters. These will either heighten your own offensive exploits by giving your increased damage or make things harder for your opponent’s endeavors by mixing up the game board or forcing them to spell words backwards.

The concept works incredibly well even in this pre-alpha version of WordFighter. The plan is to offer typical local multiplayer options, same device multiplayer on the iPad, and online multiplayer for all versions in both real-time and asynchronous turn-based fashion similar to Words With Friends [$2.99/Lite/HD]. Eventually an Android version of the game will allow for cross-platform play between iOS and Android users. The same device iPad multiplayer is especially fun as you’re literally elbow-to-elbow with your opponent frantically making words and dealing damage to each other, as you can see in the following video.

WordFighter is still in a really early state, and may even undergo a complete art style overhaul before its final release, using stylized versions of characters from popular literary works rather than anime style fighting game characters. Despite how the game ends up looking, the core concept is a lot of fun, and if Feel Every Yummy can find a way to offer a solid turn-based online multiplayer experience then WordFighter could end up being a hit. We’ll have more on WordFighter in the coming months as development continues towards its planned Summer release.

Even developers who don’t normally fiddle with their prices are now fiddling with their prices. For the first in almost two years, Imangi Studios tells us, the price of Imangi: The Game [Free] has been dropped. But get this: it’s free and will remain so for “the foreseeable future.”

When we took a look at the game back in 2008, we praised the word game’s hook. It’s something of a cross between Scrabble and a Rubik’s Cube -- you’re presented with a cluster of lettered tiles that you need to arrange in as many words as possible horizontally and vertically with mighty swipes of columns.

It’s a neat game and, well, pretty popular amongst the word game and puzzle crowd. So popular, in fact, that the husband and wife crew who created it were able to eventually build a company around the success of it and their other titles. Dig Max Adventure [$2.99] ? Thank Imangi.

Check out this video of the game in action to get a better sense of what I’m talking about if I failed you with words.

Or, hey, just go download it. It's free! Duh.

We've received word that InMotion Software, the creators of I Dig It and Dungeon Defense, has slashed the prices of a chunk of its iTunes portfolio. As of yesterday, several of their titles became cheaper than before:

I Dig It, $0.99 - [iPad] - [Review] - In I Dig It, you play as Farmer Lewis, a man who is in a bit of a monetary pickle and needs to pay the mortgage on his farm. Naturally, when faced with financial difficulties, the first thing that comes to mind is retrofitting an old bulldozer into a digging machine to search for over 60 types of subterranean treasures beneath your homestead. The iPad version, I Dig It HD [$2.99] is also on sale, and sports many improvements mentioned when we first got our hands on it.

I Dig It Expeditions, $2.99 - [iPad] - [Review] - Continuing on his adventure, Farmer Lewis strikes it big from the original I Dig It (spoilers?) and decides to take his digger on the road. In Expeditions, you dig in many different locations, including a crazy underwater level. If you liked I Dig It, Expeditions is as close to a "must-have" as you can get.

Dungeon Defense, $0.99 - [iPad] - [Review] - An odd twist on tower defense that puts you in charge of a dungeon, and you need to place various minions to defend it. The iPhone version has been 99¢ for a while, but if you've got an iPad Dungeon Defense HD [$1.99] is worth picking up while it's on the cheap.

Professor Wordington's Spellatorium [$2.99] is one of the few InMotion-developed joints that didn't receive a cut. The reason is probably tied to the fact that the game just released on the App Store on December 19 -- a mere few days ago.

Prof Word seems pretty cool based on our limited time with it so far. It's a word in which you and an opponent take turns adding letters to a word fragment. The point is to not be the dude who ends up spelling a word, or, additionally, be the first dude to point out that a word cannot be spelled from the growing letter cluster. Basically, the game boils down to tricking someone and knowing the dictionary.

Also, there's a layer of RPG elements that spice up the adversarial play. Each word fight has multiple rounds since each opponent has a health bar. You earn and find items that magnify the amount of damage you can do in a round, as well as blunt the impact of screwing up. And if that wasn't enough, there's InMotion constructed a hip, limited environment to explore and find dudes to fight inside.

Prof Word is available for the iPad now and we've been told that a Universal app update has been submitted to Apple. Check it out if this all sounds hip to you, or, hey, grab I Dig It's bangin' follow-up on the cheap.

There's an odd social disconnect in most "social" games. You can't rate each other's work. In life we wither or thrive under the scrutiny of peers, and whether this pressure is good or bad, it informs what we do and how we approach a given task or problem. This is what drew me to Haiku Wind Pro HD [$.99] for the iPad, oddly enough.

Haiku Wind Pro is a social-focused joint that encourages people to write and then rate anonymous haikus. The rating process is streamlined; a simple thumbs up and thumbs down indicator appears above each finished haiku. You need only click on one or the other to bring down righteous judgment.

The game launched last night, so the audience pool is shallow, but you can already see how others' successes are informing or influencing new works. For example, my creative haiku based on the popular song "The Thong Song" is currently sitting at a -1 rating, while other more original, much more flowery haikus are receiving praise from others. The fledgling audience expects deeper, more garnish-laced poems and, as a result, that's the majority of the content.

Imagine if Farmville [free] allowed you to rate each other's crop placement or Bejeweled Blitz let you suggest the next move. Now, imagine that this rater or suggester was just a dude on the 'net. You might think twice about how you play, right? This is what's happening in Haiku Wind Pro and it's neat to watch unfold, though its admittedly, very limited action at the moment.

Another factor that majorly weighs into you producing the best, perhaps most popular works (as, perhaps, influenced by prior works) is the game's persistent leveling system. As your poems are received well by others and you rate, you'll gain levels. Haiku Wind Pro, in this way, is like an RPG where the experience points have been replaced by some sort of shared social currency.

The streamlined UI in Haiku Wind Pro also does its part in making it easier to rate and produce; it's very, very simple. To the left, you'll always see the latest haikus in a swipe-down, Twitter-style menu. To the right, you'll see your current haiku and what level you're at, denoted by a style of mask.

There's not much more to Haiku Wind Pro; it's a barebones game with a clever idea. But I think it's a fascinating app in that illustrates a missing piece in our increasingly connected digital existence -- actually connecting with people with what we've done or created. Also, it's a neat study in how we inform each other in a confined space.

The paid version of Words With Friends HD [2.99] has been available for the iPad since the dinosaurs began hocking up miasmic balls of cosmic goo. But the free version? Nah, that hasn't been around at all -- until recently at least.

The free version of WWF HD [free] is now available to download as of yesterday, and just like its iPhone counterpart, the app is ad-supported.

In this version specifically, you'll get access to everything WWF. In other words, you'll be able to play up to 20 games at the same time, join and start online games, chat in a cute little text box while playing, receive push notifications when not in the app, and feel like a moron whenever you spell "van" knowing full well that "V" could have gone somewhere else for more points.

There's not a lot that differentiates the iPhone and iPad versions of WWF. The iPad version, of course, has more screen space to work with and looks sharper, but that's about it. I should note that, annoyingly, both the free and paid versions of the iPad app are locked in portrait mode, so no horizontal spelling action is allowed. It's a bummer, but, hey, WWF is (kinda) free now on the iPad! Why am I complaining?

Ahhh, International Pirate Day. A parodic holiday created by two guys back in 1995 that thanks to media coverage and the Internet as a whole has turned in to an international sensation. Assuming you observe the holiday, on the 19th of September you simply spend the day talking like a pirate. Some people take this even farther and dress like a pirate, go to pirate themed parties, or even pirate themed pub crawls with entire gangs of pirates marauding about town. iPhone developer Newtoy, creators of We Rule [Free] as well as both Chess With Friends [$2.99 / Free] and Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] just released Words With Pirates [Free], a pirate-themed scrabble game.

Unfortunately it would seem that Words With Pirates got caught up in the Apple approval process, or met some other speed bump along the way preventing it from being available for International Talk Like a Pirate Day on the 19th. Even though it's a little late, the game is just as ridiculous. Basically, it's Words With Friends with all the push notification powered asynchronous multiplayer that made the original great with a tile set and dictionary conducive for playing pirate words. Y's, A's, R's, G's, H's, and exclamation marks are plentiful for playing words like "Arrrrgh!" or "Harg!"

Words With Pirates is free, and only available for a limited time per the iTunes description. If you've had a good time with Words With Friends in the past, and love pirates, I'm not sure why you wouldn't grab this. If this is the first you've heard of the With Friends games, I highly recommend checking out the ad-based free versions of both Words and Chess.

NimbleBit has quite a fan following on our forums, and tonight Fishtropolis [App Store] joins their existing lineup of fun and simple iPhone games. Fishtropolis is a sequel of sorts to Textropolis [App Store] which shares all the same mechanics and gameplay elements with a whole new set of words to find within the names of 15 different types of fish.

Textropolis was well-recieved in our review, and Fishtropolis is more of the same. Starting with the letters that make up "white carp" you search for words with four or more characters. As you find more words you earn stars and attract more fish and other aquatic life to your game until the screen is almost completely full when you've found most of the words. The first star you earn unlocks the next level, "blue platy," where you start the whole process over.

When you find a word, the definition scrolls across the screen and if you find yourself stuck you can shake your phone to sacrifice five of the fish you've earned finding words to get a hint. The thing most people liked about Textropolis originally was that there were no time limits of any kind, and you can take as long as you want instead of trying to beat a clock, and Fishtropolis works the same way.

At the end of the day, Fishtropolis is little more than a reskin of Textropolis with new words to find. If you were among the many people who enjoyed the original game in the series, you will also have a lot of fun with this one. However, if you're looking for something new, there isn't much to be found in Fishtropolis aside from a different graphical theme and a new catalog of words.

App Store Link: Fishtropolis, $1.99

While this week has been filled with news and reviews of fast paced games, I've always had a weakness for word games on the iPhone, even though I'm fairly terrible at them. Here are three recently released or recently updated word games that are all worth checking out--

Guess the News [99¢ / Free] - Surprisingly enough, the news is good for more than material to auto-tune. Guess the News pulls news stories down from various RSS feeds, and turns them in to puzzles to be solved. You're given a brief description of the article, then need to guess the headline from the pile of letter tiles on the game board. Puzzles are broken out in to several categories such as health, sports, and even "odd stories". For instance, I recently played a few games in the technology category that had me guessing the titles of Engadget posts. Guess the News features three difficulty levels which control how much of the headline is already completed at the start of each puzzle, and with the dynamic content fetching provides infinite replay value.

Word Spin [$1.99] - As seen in the above trailer, this game has two parts to it, the first stage amounts to rotating and positioning the various wheels loaded with letters to line up as many words as possible. You then tap the top of the screen to lock the wheels in place, then find every word you possibly can as you rotate the locked set of word wheels searching for valid words. Once you get good enough, you can compete both against friends by sending email challenges where they will play against your exact configuration of the word wheels or by submitting your score to the global online leaderboard. The gameplay mechanic is solid and provides an interesting spin (See what I did there?) on the word hunting game formula.

Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] - Everyone who owns an iPhone or iPod Touch should have either the free or paid version of this game on their device. Words With Friends takes the game of Literati (a variant of Scrabble) and adds excellent asynchronous online multiplayer with recently added push notifications that alert you when it's your turn in any of your active games. The free version is ad supported, but otherwise fully featured, and according to a recent presentation by the developers at GDC Austin, Words With Friends and Chess With Friends [$2.99 / Free] has 50,000 active users daily.

I've had numerous Words With Friends games going for months now with nearly every friend of mine who owns an iPhone, a clever in-game search function will search the Words With Friends player database for friends of yours you want to start a game with, and if the game can't find them it will offer to send them an email invitation. Everything about the game is implemented so amazingly well that you owe it to yourself to at least try the free version if you're even remotely interested in word games, especially with the recent update adding push notifications. If you need people to play with, stop by the Words With Friends thread on our forums.

Self Aware Games recently released their free online multiplayer word game Word Ace [Free] into the App Store.

For those familiar withe Texas Hold'em Poker, the game carries the same basic structure with 5 community cards and 2 hole cards, but instead of traditional playing cards, you get dealt letters. Using the letters you have in your hand combined with the community cards, you try to form your highest scoring word. Like Hold'em, each round involves betting based on the strength of your hand or if you think you can just bluff someone off their hand. It's a nice concept and works out quite well.

The game is available for both the Palm Pre and iPhone/iPod Touch with the ability to play against others across platforms.

The developer video is being demoed on a Palm Pre, but the iPhone version plays the same:

Tournament game structure is said to be in the works as well as a Pro version that is meant to help support the developers. Self Aware has said that the free version remains fully featured:

The main thing, though, is that the game's free. Word Ace has ALL the content of Word Ace Pro EXCEPT In-App purchases, which are forbidden by Apple for free apps. WAP is for you if you want more chips, or if you simply want to help support the game's continued development! But if you don't want to pay, Word Ace (the free version) is a complete game, and you can play as much as you like.

Our forum thread has ongoing discussion with developer participation.

App Store Link: Word Ace, Free