If you're a crossword puzzle enthusiast, there is no need to sharpen pencils any longer. Now there is WordPlay, a word game with over 50 puzzles geared towards different levels of expertise: KidStuff, Easy, Regular, Sunday, Theme and Diagramless (the most chaltenging). The clues list and the puzzle dimensions are all you get when you try a diagramiess puzzie. Puzzles are viewed on screen on a 15 by 15 grid, but grid dimensions can go up to 23 by 23. Scrolling lets you view portions not visible on screen, When a puzzle choice is made, the gamer is given three options in a box. Play begins the game, Work enters the creative mode and Cancel quits. Click on Play and the selected puzzle appears In a document window with just two clues (one per direction) above the puzzle, .
Even though WordPlay's manual is stralghtforward and concise, WordPlay features Help menus (Tools menu and Help menu) to make life easier whila working out a puzzle. A Tools menu option allows the gamer to display all clues in either direction at the right of the puzzle, for those who need the whole picture.
Cursor. controls are strange and needs some getting used to. There are Key controls as well as mouse techniques. some of which serve the same purpose and all summarized along with game instructions in the Help menu.
Want to know how you're doing? The Help menu includes a Proof option, which allows all errors in a puzzle to be displayed without giving the answers away. Options on all menus can operate on selected areas of the puzzle, words or on the whole puzzle if no selection is made. When the Show Wrong option is selected from the Help menu, a question mark is placed in squares to mark where wrong letters were entered.
For those crossword players who'd never dream of filling in the blanks with ink, the Tools menu allows the option to enter a guess, which will appear in italics. If after a few more entries, you think the guess is correct, select Confirm, and voila! The guess word turns to normal print,
WordPrlay allows creative puzzlers to construct their own puzzles by starting in the Work mode. Gamers can set their own dimensions (to which changes can’t be made once work is started). Changing one square can throw off the whole puzzle to mark where wrong letters were entered because it affects other squares as well,
Gamers who love working on newspaper crossword puzzles but don't get the time to do them can alter the already available grids to input a puzzle from the newspaper for later solving.
Printing is overpowering at first since it allows styles ranging from printing a blank puzzle with clues on a separate page, to printing everything on the same page. Overall the best pastime enjoyment translated onto the Mac, WordPlay is innovative and still user friendly.
So, if crossword is your game, WordPlay is the name.
Genovese, Daisy. (March 1986). WordPlay. MacUser. (pgs. 33-34).
Designer Software (aka Palantir Software)
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
17 / 
2014-04-14 / 
a07fcb089de432c18bc76038cd2da2bed912a8fc / 
/ 
wordplay_dsk.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
