'Crosswords' on iPad imperfect, but OK

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (LIN) - Three-letter word for boredom: DMV. Pretty good cure: Crosswords.

The unambiguously named game for iPhone and iPad, $9.99 on the App Store, was already a good way to pass the time well before the iPad was a glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye.

When the iPad was released earlier this month, Crosswords easily made the leap to the bigger screen, making very good use of every last pixel. One very nice thing: the same app is optimized for both devices — meaning you buy the game once and can install it on any of your iPhones, iPads or iPod touches (or is it iPods touch?). And since upgrades are free, the app I bought a year and a half ago was free to install on my new iPad.

The first time you open the game on a Wi-Fi-only iPad or iPod touch, you need a Wi-Fi connection to download the latest puzzles from a huge list of providers, including Newsday, the Houston Chronicle, The Onion (yes, the satirical paper), Le Monde and more. Most puzzles are free. Once you have them downloaded, just solving the puzzles doesn't need an Internet connection.

And they're not just the traditional New York Times-style puzzle: there are also cryptics and British-style grids available if you'd like a different challenge.

(For simplicity here on in, I'm going to use iPhone to refer to either the iPhone or iPod touch.)

So what better way to try out the app than waiting at the DMV? A recent New Mexico-to-Rhode Island transplant, I needed to get my new license, so on a recent Saturday, iPad in hand (or in backpack, technically), I headed to the Rhode Island Mall, took a number from the machine and plopped down in front of a vacant store. Five minutes later, having downloaded the latest puzzles at home, I was working my way through a puzzle that was just challenging enough.

The controls take a little bit of time to get used to. You can navigate around the puzzle by simply touching a square, but opening the keyboard to type in an answer on iPad is a bit unintuitive: you have to flick the clue bar at the bottom of the screen up. (Simply touching the bar switches between Across and Down.) A better solution would be a simple "keyboard" button. You can close the keyboard with the "close keyboard" key that's built into the iPad keyboard.

On iPhone, it's a bit more confusing when the device is horizontal: you touch the clue you're on to make the keyboard pop up, but doing that also switches it from Across to Down or vice-versa. Fortunately, though, the keyboard is open by default. You can close it on iPhone by flicking it down.

If you get stuck, the game can give you a little help. On iPad, just touch and hold the square you're on, or on iPhone touch the Hints button. A menu will pop up with several options: fill in a square, the clue or a puzzle; check the clue or puzzle; peek at the puzzle solution; search OneAcross.com for hints; or do a Google search on the clue. A handful of puzzles don't have the fill-in, check or peek choices because they don't release their solutions until the next day, and you need an Internet connection for OneAcross or Google to work.

Those options are nice, and the first three options put a permanent red mark on the squares they affect to discourage you from using too many clues. They also disqualify you from posting your solving time on the game's regular online ranking list. (Either way, you don't have to post your time if you don't want to.)

I have one complaint over the hints, though. In previous iPhone versions of the game, you could have the game automatically remove incorrect letters when you use the check function. You still can, but the option is buried: open the puzzle list, touch the blue button on the puzzle you're working on, touch the right arrow, touch "Complete" and finally touch "Clear Errors." Or, you can hold down the backspace key for a few seconds to open a "delete" menu — but that deletes quite a few letters in the process.

But aside from the somewhat imperfect controls and the confusing hints function, Crosswords is great. It's simple enough to play once you get used to it, and with the sheer number of puzzles available, it's a relaxing way to pass the time.