Crosswords DS

The crossword screen

The crossword puzzle is displayed on the touch screen and players tap tiles with the stylus to enlarge them, and then proceed to write in the desired letter. If a correct letter is written, it appears in black, and if an incorrect letter is written it appears in red. On higher difficulties, the player has the option to do the puzzle without the game showing if the letter is correct or not. A player can erase a letter or simply draw over it. The game will automatically move to the next tile after a correct letter, and will move either down or right, depending on which mode is toggled, across or down. Each puzzle also has a certain number of hint points that the player can used if stumped, but will also add a minute to the player's time. When a puzzle is completed the game will show the amount of time it took to complete, and give the player a grade.

Word searches each have a certain category (i.e. "animals") that determine what kind of words the player will be searching for. Like a normal word search the word may appear forwards, backwards, or diagonally. The player touches the starting letter of the word, and drags the stylus to the ending letter of the word to highlight it. Once a word is found it is automatically crossed off form the word box on the left. The player's time is displayed, but no grade is given.

Anagrams give the player a certain number of letters, and the player must find every word that can be made out of the letters (2 letter words are not included). Players drag the letter tiles with the stylus into a box to make the words. When a word is found it will appear in its box on the top screen, listed in a group of how many letters the word is and alphabetically. When every word has been found, the player's time is shown, but like word searches, no grade is given. Anagrams comes in three difficulties: Short (4 letter words), Medium (5 letter words) and Long (6 letter words). Each difficulty awards you medals for completing 100, 200 and 300 anagram games. Each difficulty freezes the game once you have reached 583 anagrams of that difficulty.

The game was awarded the Best Puzzle Game on the Nintendo DS in IGN's 2008 video game awards.[12]

Crosswords Plus received above-average reviews according to Metacritic.[14] Nintendo Life praised it for its large quantity of puzzles, but criticized it for its lack of changes from the original.[15] The puzzle amount was similarly praised by Neal Ronaghan of Nintendo World Report, who criticized the game for its faulty word recognition.[16]