Advanced Crossword Solver6.1 - App Store

"...anyone grappling with the sort of evil cryptics with no black squares will appreciate its power." - The Sunday Times

The Advanced Crossword Solver is a combination of a powerful regular expression-style word matcher and a user-customisable database of nearly 300,000 words and phrases.

It is specifically designed to help with solving advanced thematic crosswords such as The Times’ Listener and The Sunday Telegraph’s Enigmatic Variations, but is also useful for word games such as Scrabble and Boggle, and indeed for any other word puzzles or games, for logic problems and as an aid to crossword setting.

Unlike most crossword solving programs, this is far more than a simple pattern matcher for unknown letters. It can be used as a pattern matcher, and can solve simple anagrams, but in addition, some of its more powerful features include:

. search for a combined pattern and anagram, when you know the answer is an anagram, and you also know where some of the letters are.
. search with wildcards, when you know that an answer includes a particular letter or string of letters, but not where in the word they are.
. solve partial anagrams, when you know that some of the letters of an answer are an anagram, but other letters are unknown.
. solve subset anagrams, when you want to find the longest word you can make from a given set of letters.
. search with multiple possibilities for letters, when you know a letter is one of a few possibilities, but not which one it is.
. search with letter variables, when you know that several letters are the same, but not which letter it is.
. search with vowel and consonant symbols, when you know that a letter is either a vowel or a consonant, but not which letter it is.
. search for all the words which are one misprinted letter away from another word.
. search for words which match a given pattern but which have one or more misprinted letters.
. search for pairs of words (across and down) which cross at an unknown letter.

Using the simple input syntax, complex combinations of the above can be searched to quickly narrow down to a solution. Even the most complex search takes no more than a few seconds, and results are clearly presented in a scrollable list.

Tapping on a result from the solver shows a menu which allows the result to be looked up in a choice of iPhone dictionary and thesaurus applications, including Chambers and WordWeb, or online. This menu can be customised to add your own choice of applications and websites. (Note that in order to link to a dictionary, it must offer a URL that can be used by other apps - check with the publisher of your chosen dictionary that this is the case.)

The word list used by the Solver is a combination of the UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary (UKACD) and the Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon (ENABLE). The UKACD is compiled by a crossword puzzle enthusiast from the words and phrases that are found in typical British advanced cryptic puzzles. ENABLE is an authoritative list of Scrabble words valid in both US and UK games. Between the two lists, the program searches a database of over 298,000 words and phrases.

The word list used by the solver is stored as plain text files, and the files can be accessed via iTunes to allow them to be customised to your own requirements - words can be added or removed, or the entire word list can be replaced if desired. In addition, the symbols used to denote the input syntax can also be changed, making the entire operation of the solver customisable to your own requirements.

If your taste in puzzles extends to the truly challenging, this is the application for you.

Version History Added the ability to define the length of an anagram as being a certain number of characters longer or shorter than the supplied letterset. 6.1 11/17/2024 Updated for latest versions of iOS 6.0 11/28/2022 • Dark mode added
• Accessory keyboard tidied to better match main keyboard on all devices 5.0 10/04/2019 • Screen layout fixes for various platforms 4.9 10/01/2019 • Fix for accessory keyboard not appearing on iOS 13
• Screen layout fixes for recent devices such as iPhone X 4.8 09/30/2019 Bug fix for accessory keyboard symbols being incorrect on first launch. 4.7 04/03/2018 Fix for keyboard bug under iOS 11 4.6 10/02/2017 Support for split-screen mode 4.5 08/26/2017 • Rebuilt for latest versions of iOS; no changes in functionality 4.4 01/24/2017 • Fix for landscape keyboard display bug on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ 4.3 05/08/2015 • Bug fix for crashes when running on versions of iOS prior to iOS 8
• Bug fix for screen rotation problems when running on iOS 8 4.2 12/30/2014 WARNING - if you are not running iOS 8, DO NOT DOWNLOAD this version yet. There is a bug which causes a crash on iOS 7 - a fixed version will be released as soon as possible. Many apologies for the inconvenience.

• Rebuilt for iOS 8
• Order string handling extended to allow words shorter than the order string to be found
• Font size can now be adjusted in Settings screen
• Space bar can now enter ? character at any point in input string
• Bug fix - occasional crash when accessing reference menu under iOS 8 fixed
• Bug fix - undesired capitalisation in input string under iOS 8 removed 4.1 12/20/2014 • Updated for iOS 7
• Assistance with DLM (definition & letter mixture) type clues - type "5^thequickbrownfox" to find all 5 letter anagrams made up from sequential strings of 5 letters in "the quick brown fox" 4.0 10/30/2013 Fixed bug in order strings where words would only be found whose first character was the same as that of the supplied order string. 3.8 05/02/2013 New feature - order lists.

An order list is a pattern prefixed by the ~ symbol, and finds words which contain all letters in the list in the same order, but with any number of other letters between them. This is useful for crossword puzzles with "letters latent" type entries. 3.7 04/21/2013 • Bug fix for incorrect screen layout on iPads running iOS6 in landscape mode 3.6 11/04/2012 • Support for iOS6 and the new iPhone 5
• Settings option to allow a single reference source to be accessed without using the menu
• Settings option to allow selection between inbuilt and user-customised word lists
• Bug fix for occasional incorrect display of symbols in the accessory keypad
• Bug fix for repeated answers in paired word searches

IMPORTANT: if you are currently using customised word lists, you need to go into the iPhone Settings screen and turn on the Custom Lists switch to continue to use them - see the online help for more details.

Note that, in order to add support for the new iOS 6, it has been necessary to increase the minimum version of iOS on which this app will run to 4.3 - please upgrade your device if necessary. 3.5 10/24/2012 • Tapping and holding an answer in the results list looks up the definition in the built-in dictionary on iOS 5 3.4 02/01/2012 • Word breaks can be denoted in the search to restrict results to multiple word answers.
• There is now a single reference menu which can be customised by the user, rather than the two used previously.
• The gesture to look up the second word in a paired word search is now a double tap rather than a tap with two fingers.
• Rebuilt for iOS 5.

Note that previous versions allowed results to be looked up in the Dictionary.com application; recently, Dictionary.com have modified this to prevent other applications from accessing it, so the option to look up results in it has been removed. 3.3 12/11/2011 • Letter variables are now allowed in a subset letterset, as long as they are also used in an accompanying pattern
• Bug fix - display of additional letters used in matching lettersets corrected 3.2 09/16/2011 • New syntax element - "not lists" enclosed in square brackets enable you to define a list of letters that an unknown letter cannot be
• Significant speed improvement in the handling of choice lists
• Context-sensitive buttons on accessory keyboard for adding choice and not lists
• Bug fix - layout of progress bar on landscape screens fixed
• Bug fix - crash in search history view fixed 3.1 08/30/2011 • Major enhancements to 2-D (paired word) search functionality; now supports the use of letter variables and vowel and consonant symbols, so multiple matching letters can be defined.
• Search history now stores the last 20 search strings.
• Keys on add-on keyboard modified to add paired word search symbols.
• Progress bar now shown during long searches.
• App URL now supports passing strings into search bar. 3.0 08/09/2011 • Bug fix - fixes lag in detection of touches on results list.
• URI "acsolver://" added to launch the application directly from within other apps. 2.3 07/15/2011 • Now allows simultaneous searches of two patterns with a common unknown letter. This enables intersecting across and down answers to be found. See "Paired Words" in the online help for more information.

Note that Advanced Crossword Solver now requires a minimum version of iOS 3.2. It was not possible to implement some of the new functionality of this version under older versions of iOS - apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Note also that some people are experiencing delayed response to swipes and touches with the new version. This seems to be a problem with running low on memory or other apps running in the background. If you see this problem, reboot your phone by simultaneously holding down the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons for 10 seconds, until the screen goes black and the Apple logo appears. 2.2 07/06/2011 Fixes crash caused by new keyboard when run under iOS 3.1.3. 2.1 08/11/2010