Last updated on November 30th, 2025 at 09:46 pm
Crostics – Word Game Review
Crostics is a Word/Puzzle game from John Blackburn, first launched in 6th November 2017.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 625+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Crostics Stand Out
Like word games? Crossword puzzles? Then you’ll love Crostics, the new word game where you reveal a hidden quote by answering clues, and decipher clues by filling in the quote! Letter in the answers are linked to letters in the quote—answer the clues, and you uncover more and more of the quote, or fill in more of the quote to decipher the clues.
Beautifully designed for iPhone and iPad, Crostics puts engaging puzzles at your fingertips without the pain of erasing pencil marks from paper. The result is more fun with less distraction. And no ads!
Crostics includes a free book of 24 puzzles and you can buy more right in the app. There are a wide range of difficultly levels, so whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned player you’ll find a good challenge to stretch your brain!
If you like word games, you’re going to love Crostics!
Features
- Unlimited hints
- Undo
- Play in portrait (and in landscape on iPad)
- Play in Light or Dark mode
- Learn how to play with the included help
This Word game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Crostics is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 17th November 2020
Recent improvements include:
Added four new books, plus a few minor improvements.
Download & Availability
Crostics is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
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:
A lot of fun, definitely the best version of this game Ive found for mobile. We would like the ability to turn on spaces in the clues instead of having some of the answers be a few words all mashed together. Also it would be fun to get to guess the authors of each quote. More levels would be great too. Good game overall.
Challenging enough, simple platform with no ads to force someone to purchase for relief. We never purchase, but did on this one :) why? Because we wanted to due to the fact we enjoyed ourselves and the app. Thank you. Hopefully more books after the 8 packs of 24 we bought. If not, Im satisfied with our experience. Kudos to the developer.
We greatly enjoy doing these puzzles. We wish there were more to buy.
More books, please! Very easy to read. We use night mode. This app is best and our favorite. Looking forward to getting more new books.
A lot of fun, definitely the best version of this game Ive found for mobile. We would like the ability to turn on spaces in the clues instead of having some of the answers be a few words all mashed together. Also it would be fun to get to guess the authors of each quote. More levels would be great too. Good game overall.
We found these puzzles easier than others but we really like them. The app has a few quirks, e.g. Freezing occasionally, strangely resizing occasionally, but overall we like the way it navigates, especially through the quotation part of puzzle where it automatically moves to the next open square instead of just the next square. We wish it had options, e.g. We'd like to turn off the feature that lets you know you got a clue answer right. For us, it's part of the challenge to let the quotation confirm the accuracy of the clue answers.
Custom keyboard is great. We can type faster with fewer mistakes with authors custom keyboard than Apples original keyboard. Author John is responsive and polite. Clues are a good mix of easy and hard. Interface is a joy to use: both modern and easy to tap. Sound effects are minimal and delightful – never getting old. Happily paid the $9.99 for the additional 192 puzzles. What a great game. Only nitpick: could use automatic dark/light mode switcher.
We have finished Books 1 to 5. Are there more puzzles after the 5th book? We have enjoyed the ones that we have done.
Great game; challenging and fun.
Hoping there are more books of games to come soon. Thoroughly enjoying this app. Very easy to play – but very challenging as well.
A What a great way to pass the time! Great way to pass time and forget aboutWhat a great way to spend the time.
Love this! We played everyday until..no more puzzles. We really miss it and cant wait for more to be available. Such a different word game. We love that you can play two ways. Please make more.
This is a good game for killing time. You can jump in and out even in the middle of a puzzle. The user experience is good. We like how easy it is to jump back and forth between puzzles. We dont lose track of where we are like we do in other word games of this type. It just feels good to play. One temporary announce was having to press delete a bunch of times to clear a word but we see now that you can long press for that. The puzzles themselves are decent though there are some differences if youre used to the Dell/Penny Press puzzles. They have two letter clues and theyre often easier than they could be (e.g. The state abbreviations). Having two letters from the same clue in the same word in the quote is not allowed in the magazines. The first letters of the clues dont spell the author and source. And it took a bit for us to realize clues like helps land airplanes refer to a person and not an action. We suspect much of this is dictated by the smaller phone screens which would be much harder to manage for the length of puzzle you normally see. Either way, its a fun casual game and Ill be purchasing the puzzle packs shortly.
Weve played several and this is the best. Another quality game by the developer. We wish there were more to buy.
[Dear DeveloperI noticed your response late; thanks for it. We acknowledge your points about fitting everything on one screen. Other developers have done this, but their apps are awkward to use and have other problems yours doesnt. We think your app is the most pleasant to use. Please note Ive added a nerdy comment below about letter distribution.] With each new crostics app, Im seeing the original puzzle lose more and more of its form and functions. If we wasnt still attached to the Thomas Middleton crostics from back in the day, Id probably be giving more stars. With this app, Id like to see the clues and quote grid on the same page (perhaps the letters dont need to be as large as they are). We dont want to be told explicitly and immediately when Ive answered a clue correctlythats cheating. (Maybe that could be a settable feature.) we suppose we should give up on the feature where the first letter of each clue spells the authors name and possibly the name of the quote. We wouldnt mind some more scholarly-type clues referencing for instance history, literature, etc. Including some more challenging puzzles might be nice. Note to the developer: this is our second edit. Another comment: letters from the quote should be distributed randomly among the clues. You are winding up with many letters in a quote word all being in the same clue word. When creating the puzzle, youre filling in the clues more or less in order. It undermines the ability to go back and forth and have one mode, quote or clues, inform & disambiguate the other. It defeats the underlying elegance of crostics versus straight crossword puzzles. This is especially problematic when the words involved are short. Spoiler Alert: Have a look at Book 4, Puzzle 11, the last 3-letter word in the quote. There are some very nice things here. The visual design is clean and handsome, the sound effects are perfect, and the navigation is functional and intuitive. When entering letters, we found the back-and-forth between grid and clues fluid and easy. We like the way the app is smart about where the focus is put when entering and deleting letters, although it would be nice to be able to delete all the letters in a clue answer with one action. We like the confetti animation at the end :) Little thing: Id like to be able to go back and look at a solved puzzle. As it stands now, we can only view the puzzle again after the solution has been cleared. Im on an iPad.
We loved being able to play one of our favorite word puzzles as an app! We were mostly pleased, but we wish that the clues said when it was more than a word (2 words) (3 words) etc… We also prefer longer puzzles, but thats not a huge deal.
Yay!! More puzzles. Ive been waiting for this, checking daily. We even replayed previous books in the interim. Thank you John Blackburn.
Why did our previous review disappear?? Have never had that happen Thats really annoying!! Dont want to retype. Love the beautifully clean interface, fun clues, quotes, and help button right on the keyboard. Cant remember what else we prev wrote. Just download. We love their other apps although we havent tried their one that isnt free. Theres are one of the only few that we actually buy more puzzles. We did email the authors about needing more puzzles. Am replaying old ones but ready for new ;-). They are very responsive. As Ive gotten better, our requests arent so needed ;-).
This is a great app and we really enjoy playing. Most other puzzle apps charge .99 cents for sets of 50 puzzles. $1.99 for only 24 puzzles is too expensive in our opinion. If the price drops, we would buy.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.3
- Size: 24.58 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: John Blackburn
Last updated: 17th November 2020 | Genre: Word, Puzzle | Developer: John Blackburn