KnotWords: Where Crossword Puzzles Meets Soduku
As far back as I can remember, my father was very much into puzzle games. His favorite was Jumble, a word scramble game that appeared next to the comics section in our daily newspaper.
Jumble (image courtesy of Wikipedia)
He also enjoyed solving crossword puzzles. About 20 years ago, he became interested in Soduku. I have many a memory of him with a pen in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. He was quite adept as a puzzle solver.
A “Solved” KnotWords board.
There’s no doubt in my mind that my father would have enjoyed Knotwords, a game that, on first blush, looks like a hybrid Soduku / crossword puzzle, without any numbered rows or columns. Knotwords plays like Soduku, but instead of calculating sums, the objective of Knotwords is to piece together words from letter hints on the board.
Knotwords is deceptively simple to understand, making it easy to get into. The puzzle board is divided into multiple segments (by way of dotted lines). Within each segment are the letters you can choose from. It’s up to you to guess the correct letter sequence within each segment, to make words for each row and column on the puzzle board.
A blank Knotwords board.
The solution to the previous blank Knotwords board.
You can choose to have your games timed (or not). If you get stuck, you can always ask for a hint (up to six hints per puzzle board). Knotwords encourages daily play, but you can go at your own pace if you wish. The puzzle board starts off easy on Monday, like in the example shown below.
A Knotwords game in progress. The letters on the keyboard are the ones you can currently select from, based on the segment you are in.
A typical puzzle board size for Sundays.
Saturday and Sunday puzzle boards are much larger, usually taking me about 15 – 20 minutes to play on average.
Knotwords shows you your current streak for each of your three daily puzzles.
If you play and win each daily game (three new puzzles are provided each day), you will accumulate a streak for each game you complete. Currently, my record streak is 665 days.
If you miss a day, your streak reverts back to zero. But (thankfully) Knotwords offers some grace here – you can recover your streak if you play and win 7 daily games in a row. Thus far, I have recovered my streak twice in almost two years of play.
Knotwords is free for Android and iOS, with a paid option to unlock even more puzzles. I have enjoyed this game so much, that it was a no-brainer purchase for me (roughly $13US). Knotwords is a great game if you enjoy solving puzzles.
I’m sure my dad would have loved it.
-Krishna
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