SpellGrid Gives You A Quick Fix Of High-Pressure Spelling [Review]

By

SpellGrid

I can really appreciate an app that values my time, so I’m going to just throw this in here at the start: SpellGrid, an anagram/crossword game out now for iPhone and iPad, will have you playing within five seconds of opening it. That doesn’t affect my review, but I’ve seen enough startup loading screens to think this is worth mentioning.

SpellGrid by Song San Hong
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99

Alright, now about the game:

In SpellGrid, you start with a word which contains no repeating letters (e.g. smelting). Then, you have a set amount of time to see how many more words you can form, crossword-style, from those letters. The amount of time depends on the length of the starting word; it can be seven, eight, or nine letters long, and you’ll have one, two, or three minutes, respectively, to play your round.

SpellGrid
You can look up definitions for the words you create, in case you were just throwing tiles around like a crazy person.
You build words by dragging and dropping the tiles already on the board. You can clone letters as needed, and the game calculates a score for each one based on the individual point values of each tile and the length of the new word. And that’s basically all there is to it; you jump in, make your words, the game gives you a score, and you either congratulate or hate yourself afterward.

Competitive types can challenge their friends to beat their scores on the same word (the game includes Facebook integration and Twitter functionality), or they can even make their own seed word and try to mess with their pals that way.

It’s a fun, high-energy twist on anagram games.

It’s occasionally a little difficult to find things in the menus, however. For example, if you want to make your own word, you have to tap the icon to the left of “Quick Play” on the main menu to pass through two other options before you get to where you want to go, but the only indication that this is possible is that the icon blinks a little. That’s probably enough for most people, but it took me a while, and I’m not really ashamed to admit it.

Despite that, however, SpellGrid is a good, quick game that provides a great challenge and plenty of opportunity for personal growth and trash-talking. Check it out.



SpellGridGame Name: : SpellGrid
The Good: Quick to jump in, intuitive controls, and tons of replay value.
The Bad: Menus are a little obtuse.
The Verdict It’s a fun, high-energy twist on anagram games. Well worth a play to word fans, if that’s, like, a thing.
Buy from: App Store

[rating=game5]

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.