Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 08:45 pm
Crosswords Classic – Word Game Review
Crosswords Classic is a Word/Puzzle/Entertainment game from Stand Alone, Inc., first launched in 31st January 2019.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 73+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Crosswords Classic Stand Out
"… the definitive source for puzzles for iOS…" — the New York Times
Download and play crossword puzzles right on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Each day many newspapers provide their crossword puzzles online; with one tap you can download and solve them, get hints, view clues, and track how quickly you're improving!
The #1 Crossword Player on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch just got even better!
• New: Sync your puzzles with Crosswords for Mac; Start a puzzle on your Mac, then finish it on your iPhone or iPad.
• Get new puzzles every day
• Touch and hold a square to view hints on iPad
• Enter Numbers and other special characters by holding down keys
• One tap downloads all of today's puzzles
• Nearly unlimited puzzles from many different sites
• US and UK Cryptic puzzles available
• Hints, Websites, and Clue lookups
• Enter answers in 'ink' or 'pencil'
• Quickly see your recently played, or sort by date or provider
• Detailed info on each puzzle
• Post your solve times online and compare with other solvers
• Grab older puzzles with a tap
• Tap the clue list with two fingers to adjust the font size (iPad only)
Included Puzzle Sources:
• Brendan Emmett Quigley's Weekly Puzzle
• Jonesin'
• King Features Crosswords (Joseph, Sheffer, and Premier)
• Newsday
• Andy Kravis, Cruciverbist at Law
• Glutton for Pun
• MacNamara’s Band
• Murchie’s Monday Fills
• Neville Fogarty
• Puzzle Express
• The Stickler Weekly
• World of Crosswords
Premium Crosswords subscription required:
• Matt Gaffney’s Crossword Contest
• American Values Crossword
• Crooked Crosswords
• Additional puzzles downloadable via the Puzzle Browser; browse the web and download more!
Providers list subject to change. Some providers may no longer be publishing, but may still have older puzzles available in Archive form, accessible via the "Download Older Puzzles" option.
• For support, please visit our website at http://www.standalone.com •
Tips:
• You can tap on the clue text at the bottom of the screen to toggle across & down
• Rotate the screen to see both the puzzle and clues
• Touch for a moment then drag to precisely select a square.
• Touch the Plus to download older puzzles
Please note that Crosswords requires an internet connection to download puzzles. Syncing puzzles to your Mac requires the purchase of Crosswords from the Mac App Store. Multiplayer requires iOS 6.0 or later.
Privacy Policy: https://www.standalone.com/legal/
EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
This Word game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Crosswords Classic is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 4th April 2024
Recent improvements include:
Fixed a crash when hitting the Help button.
Download & Availability
Crosswords Classic is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Crosswords Classic on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This is our favorite crossword app. It has tons of daily crosswords & is free with no ads.
Ive had this app for YEARS. Back in the day Starbucks used to have these cards with promo codes to get certain paid apps for free and this was one of them. We love this crossword app. Easily the best one out there. But then they stopped supporting this one because they have a different one you can pay for and they never decommissioned this, thankfully. We do use the Hints feature on some of the harder puzzles and we really wish theyd stop using OneAcross.com which is basically just a spam ad site and now it doesnt even give you the hints. We wish theyd support this app again, its the best no frills crossword app.
We love the endless stream of puzzles and can choose source/difficulty. The UI is great as you can use left thumb on arrows to scroll through clues and it always shows both directional clues on whatever square youre on. One of the oldest apps ive owned and amazed its held up so long, just had to finally post a review! Also appreciate diff options like we enjoy the red letter mode for incorrect letters life is too short to have to wrangle a puzzle to trip over bad guesses.
We have had this app on both our iPhone and iPad for several years now and we love it. Recently the app on our iPad got messed up so we deleted it and reinstalled. The options gear was missing on the reinstall and we were unable to change the settings to our liking. We contacted Customer Service (Ben) who investigated the issue and created an update to fix it. Im a happy Crosswords Classic geek again.
It would be so much easier to be able to filter the difficulty list by source and also to filter the source list by digit. Could you please add this in? Thank you.
Everything was okay. All our entries were black letters. We had errors set to hidden. Then for no reason all our entries are red. Correct and incorrect. If we set it to errors in red our entries are black if correct but now we see every wrong entry and that feels like cheating. We tried deleting and re-loading the app. It worked for about a week. Now Im seeing red again. Its just not fun anymore.
Ive used this app for years and its been great. However, Ive noticed that crossword providers have been shrinking and lately none of the Newsday Crosswords are available. Whats going on.
Was a good app with support. Now missing puzzles and developer does not reply to support submissions.
We use this almost daily. The one issue we have are the occasional puzzles where there are apparently several letters in one box as part of the solution. Theres no way to enter that, so theres no way to solve the puzzle. Its rather irritating and we end up deleting them/not bothering when we come across themits just not obvious at first.
Ive had this app for a few years but it has recently quit downloading new puzzles. Havent been able to download one since May 27. Disappointing.
The free cw from sai works for us in braille using ipad, voiceover and a braille display. Imagine our shock and horror then (eek!) when, after plunking down our ten sheckels, we find the classic version totally inaccessible. We considered suicide :) but lack the energy since we quit coffee. Please, pleas, pretty please, with sugar and spit, fix the classic version so voiceover users can use it. If not may a thousand ernes defile your windshield. If you need beta testing or feedback just holler. –Brian Tew.
Can no longer print. Really? Who is in charge of testing.
It seems like the developers just walked away from this app. There is no support whatsoever. Ive been waiting months for them to fix the problem of being unable to print out the puzzles. We get a generic answer that they are aware of the problem and working on it but…..months??? Cmon guys, you charge a pretty steep price for an app that has no developer support. Wish we could get our money back. Wont be downloading any more apps from Standalone, thats for sure.
One of the first apps we ever got on our iPad, really love it. Recently not downloading all the puzzles we used to get. Only problem.
Year after year, this has been the best iOS crossword app. Dont know what Id do without it. The gameplay, the configurability, the use of screen real estate… All best in class. We just wish it still handled NYT subscriptions like other crossword apps do.
Ben whatever the heck his name is, wrote ALL the beginner crossword and let us tell you, a college educated woman , cant do one of them. It is frustrating to the point of wanting to throw the whole thing out the window. We knew answers for some of these but he used obscure words and people the average person couldnt possibly know. If youre a PhD geek, or a new york times player, great, we chose it for beginning puzzles . No way.
Used this app for 10 years. After paying for it, they lost most of their good puzzle providers. Then frequent syncing issues between iPhone & iPad. Developer very hard to deal with & constant issues. Lost thousands of puzzles today – just disappeared – Im done now. We will never, ever buy any app from standalone inc again.
Used for years but last update deleted all this years puzzles we had planned on doing. Never update again.
Latest versions no longer load the LA Times puzzles. Why? What happened.
They dont have any 24×24 grids anymore, expect maybe once or twice a week. Updates have not delivered any significant improvements or features over the years. Theyre just not trying.
With the last update or two, delete all errors does not work.
We've been using this app on an almost daily basis since the original app on our Palm PDA. The latest iOS broke the ability to send a .puz file to this app, but the developers have emailed us that they have notified Apple of the problem. Fortunately, its very easy to download .puz files to a Dropbox\Apps\Crossword directory on our laptop, then select Import From Dropbox to download those files to this app. By the way, we do crossword puzzles from the New York Times, LATimes, Universal, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Chronicle of Higher Education in this app. You can get the LATimes puzzle by signing up (free) at cruciverb.com and there are links to the other puzzles at Crosswordfiend.com/download.
We used to have no problem with new puzzles being imported and then????? All of a sudden puzzles stopped com8ng in…annoying.
We love this app but the shrinking supply of puzzles is a concern. Many of our favorite titles no longer seem to be available. Is anything being done to increase the supply.
This used to be our favorite crossword app. And it has worked fairly well: we find it easier to operate than other apps. Our main concern is the supply of puzzles. Our favorite puzzle provider is no longer available , and for a number of the providers that we selected, we havent seen a new download in years. The puzzles that are still available no longer interest us, so Ive subscribed to the NYT puzzles and use their app to work them. Its not as convenient as this app, but they supply a steady stream of interesting puzzles.
The rating says its for ages 4+, but Ive come across multiple puzzles with profanity in the clues.
We love this app, but we have been unable to download additional puzzles since Memorial Day 2018.
On Monday,July 2, the Newsday puzzles dont seem to be downloading anymore. What happened.
Been using this app for years and now when trying to download new puzzles we get a message that says we must connect to the internet to download puzzles. However we are always connected to the internet.
Ive had this app and enjoyed it for years. This is the second time we have not been able to receive new puzzles. This is been going on for weeks. We have sent in two different queries asking why this is happening and what we can do. No one ever writes back. Maybe theyve gone out of business.
Ive used this app for years and appreciate its many great features and we still prefer it to alternative apps but over the past months Ive experienced and reported problems to the developer. The worst problem is occasionally when solving a puzzle and then switching to another app and then returning to this one all of our entries disappear. Not good! As commented by other reviewers the formatting within the app is inconsistent with titles not been fully displayed and most annoyingly on the iPad the puzzle grid continually re-sizes itself when checking clues.
We love the fact this app exists and has existed forever and we love the flow of it (how you jump clues, how you input text, etc). But to be honest, we don't understand why this app is so buggy. Every update in the last 5 years brings missing buttons, misaligned toolbars, disappearing puzzles, or some such.
We have been using this app since 2011/2012, been using it almost nightly for the past 4 years. This is THE crossword app to have.
Right now, not one of our favorite apps. Major problems since the last update, there are a few glitches in it. The latest update makes it so you can't even see the top line across because it's shaded by the toolbar and the puzzle won't move.
We second what Artemus reported: can no longer see the top of the puzzle – app is unusable. Once again we have to wait for them to fix the upgrade.
The latest version of the app silently removed support for the New York Times crossword as a premium puzzle, which was the only thing we used the app for. Very disappointing.
Looks like The New York Times crossword is no longer an option. Subscription or not. Yet it's still listed as a premium provider. It seems like that should be corrected. We hope removing that puzzle provider wasn't by the choice of the app designers. That would be a poor choice. The app does have a nice clean interface.
Ouch! Love this app, but what happened to the NYTimes daily puzzle.
Terrific app but can't download NY Times puzzles anymore. What's going on.
Great app. Excellent support. A pleasure to use. . Excellent app. Plenty of free crosswords easily accessed and the interface has many choices to satisfy at least ourselves. Most expensive app we've purchased but it's the one we use the most. Latest update. Big problems. When checking on Washington Post Puzzles there is no way to navigate away from the info page. We had to delete and reinstall which deleted all of unsolved puzzles and added puzzles we had already solved and deleted earlier. Just happened a 2nd time. No response from bug report. Update. App closed and the puzzle we were working on vanished.
The New York Times no longer allows their crosswords to appear directly here on the app. You must download and import.
Where is The NY Times Crossword.
Glad to know we're not the only who can no longer download NYT xwords. Please fix.
Loved the app until June 1. Since then cannot download NYT crosswords. Can't even open account to verify subscription.
Also no longer able to download nyt puzzles! Chiming in as well so that creator knows this is across many users.
NYT puzzle just went away–Poof! And now we've probably bought two subscriptions. Keeps telling us our account's not valid and now NYT isn't even among the list of puzzles for this app to download. Big disappointment.
We like this app a lot! But every once in a while it has a puzzle that requires more than 1 letter per square. How are we supposed to fill them all in.
Crashes when the puzzle is solved, no menu to delete the solved and open new.
Love this app. Great crosswords at different skill levels.
Plenty of puzzles at multiple levels. We recommend this app if you like crossword puzzles.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.93
- Size: 14.74 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, ES
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Stand Alone, Inc.
Last updated: 4th April 2024 | Genre: Word, Puzzle | Developer: Stand Alone, Inc.