USA TODAY Crossword Wiki

Love this new version! So easy to use.

Crosswords are fun in general, and I’ve always enjoyed USA Today’s. Here are a few of my problems and suggestions: 1. Completed puzzles while logged in do not always save. 2. I wish there was a way to download puzzles for use when internet is not available. 3. I LOVE the tournament feature but hate how easily it kicks you out of the puzzle (e.g. phone calls, accidentally closing the app). My suggestion instead of being kicked out of the puzzle: allow puzzlers to continue completing the puzzle (for fun and to receive a score for personal achievement) but disqualify from the tournament. Thoughts?

The crosswords are great, but this app needs serious UX/UI help. Its really hard to keep track of which puzzles you have completed or which are in progress as it shows different little icons that don’t make any sense. The icons don’t actually seem to match up with any progress in particular - completed, not started, unlocked, in progress, etc. It doesn’t save your puzzles 50% of the time so you may spend 45 minutes on a puzzle, only to have it completely blank next time you log in. Not only that, but you have to use coins when playing for free and so you lose unlocks every time you are forced to restart, only to find the crossword blank all over again.

The app worked great before the update. Will not go to next empty letter or clue, despite having that option turned on. Cant see the whole puzzle on screen at one time, as i could before. There are more, but that’s the 2 most annoying. Thinking of cancelling my subscription if they don’t fix it. Not great, USA Today!

I have been playing the daily crossword for years. Today, it looked like I had to subscribe to play. I did only because it said there would be unlimited daily crosswords. Sadly, the “unlimited” is only the archived crosswords which I have already played. I will be cancelling my subscription!

Have been doing the crossword on the USA Today crossword puzzle for years on paper when I worked in the steel mill and digitally now. Was sadden to see I now have to pay monthly. So I will delete the USA Today app and find another paper to read and another crossword puzzle to do. Was my brain exercise every day.

App used to be fine until latest update. Will not let me use my attached keyboard on my iPad. Internal keyboard covers part of puzzle regardless of screen orientation and will not allow access to bottom of puzzle. Old app worked just fine, leave it alone!!!

Ever in a quest to see if they can outdo themselves to make subsequent programs even worse than the previous, USA today’s current crossword puzzle app takes the cake. Recently downloaded it from the App Store and solved a couple of puzzles. Very limited solving options. For example, if you have a couple of letters in a word and later you add subsequent letters it doesn’t take you back to the beginning of the word for any remaining blank spaces. It takes you to the next word. When you finish the puzzle there is no button to press to check for errors so you can try and learn from any mistakes. It will show you a solved puzzle, but then you have to figure out any mistakes you made. App still requires you to be online to use. Does not retain the puzzle for off-line use. They need to look at the app for the New York Times crossword puzzles and develop something similar. Most people would be happy to pay for a reliable app that they can use off-line! It also needs more robust features such as solving for a letter, word or the entire puzzle. Unreal these guys can’t figure this out and get it right!

The app’s new solving interface is so bad, the first time I saw it I thought it was a bug. Here is an abbreviated list of its crimes against usability: - The puzzle grid has been squished and pushed to the side to make room for an awkward column of clues to its left, which makes the grid harder to read, makes its tap targets smaller, and introduces wasted space above and below. - Worse, this new clue column is redundant given that both the current down and across clue ALREADY APPEAR above the keyboard. - Speaking of the keyboard, all the keys have been squished to the left in order to fit some teeny tiny navigation buttons that move you from clue to clue and letter to letter. So not only is it harder to type accurately, the user is also prone to accidentally moving the cursor while typing. Cool! - Then, there’s an always-visible set of hint buttons immediately below the last row of letters on the keyboard. These are also very easy to tap by accident and, if you can believe it, the “reveal letter” and “reveal clue” buttons don’t even ask for confirmation before filling in the answer!! This app breaks virtually every UI design rule in the book! It’s especially a shame because the USA Today crossword is otherwise so good these days, but the app is so terrible I stopped solving them. Would give this zero stars if I could. So disappointed.

I enjoyed the crosswords when it worked, but the app seems to crash when opening it very often. Most times I would try to play, I would have open the app 5-10 times before it would finally load. During one especially bad attempt, I got logged out, as well. Logging back in when it finally opened revealed that all of my badges and progress stats were gone. The app showed by current streak as 6 days, but by day 11, my badge stat was only at 5 days in a row. About 3 days ago, I checked the reviews, saw advice to uninstall and reinstall to fix crashing problems, and gave that a shot. It helped for 2 days, but after 5 or 6 tries today, I gave up completely, uninstalled the app, and came to leave a review. There are other crossword apps out there...give them a shot before this one. Model: iPhone 7 Plus iOS version: 12.3.1

What in the world?!?! Update? Is that what you call it? It should have been called a downgrade! Please go back! Was the last version perfect? No, of course not. There is always room for improvement, but at least it was useable. This latest update is ten times worse. Does anybody who was involved in the update actually play the crossword? I would say not because every feature that made it playable was taken away in favor of fresh new colors. You cannot see all the clues, the navigation and keyboard are counterintuitive, the delete function is a disaster, and without coins and badges the competitive aspect is gone. And you expect me to pay 6 dollars a month for this!?!? Please read the reviews, take them to heart, and go back to the drawing board on what used to be an amazing app.

The original app was so addicting. I was so sad for years while this was missing from the App Store. Recently, I went to check and see (for probably the dozenth time) if they had brought it back. It was so exciting to see it was back! However, I was immediately disappointed with the new version. It’s constantly asking me to pay for features, and as a poor college student with no money for things that aren’t rent or food, I now find it completely unplayable. I loved the old version, but am deleting this sad imitation. I understand the need to make money and I wouldn’t mind sitting through ads if it meant I got to play a fuller app, but instead they choose to go with a subscription based service and have lost me as a customer entirely. I’m so disappointed.

I’ve been doing this crossword for almost two years. I had earned every available badge outside of the tournament ones. It was nice to be able to use earned coins to go back and do puzzles if you missed a day. My streak was over over 400 days and today it’s back to 1. The puzzle doesn’t fit the screen anymore and the cursor doesn’t move to the open square automatically anymore if you swap between across and down clues. It’s really a mess overall and a total letdown. This was my fun puzzle to do each day. I challenge myself on The NY Times crossword everyday, but this was entertaining on a different level for me. I don’t see myself using this one anymore. I already do the Times and this one doesn’t function as well.

I'm a daily NYTXW solver and wanted to add the USA Today crossword to my daily solve. I downloaded the app and signed up. I solve using my iPad with a keyboard case. The case has the iPad in the landscape orientation. Imagine my surprise when it looked like the app didn't support landscape mode. I looked all over the app's settings to find how to unlock the orientation... there was none. What kind of developer in this day and age doesn't have their app rotate according to the orientation of the tablet? It makes the app virtually unusable for me. Sadly, I won't be continuing my subscription after the free trial. It's a shame because I always enjoyed the USAT puzzle in its paper form. I'll check back periodically to see if there's an update, but until then... sorry.