When you buy a crossword puzzle game, it's really the same as those people that buy the books filled with them. This here is just a digital version. Obviously there's some serious benefits to going digital, but along with those benefits come a few shortcomings.

Let's talk about the benefits first. The first is clearly the amount of puzzles you're able to carry around with you, and USA Today Crossword Challenge has around 600 total. Those break down across 2 languages however, so you have 300 English and 300 Spanish. You very rarely see a game like this cover two languages, especially because with all that text involved it's more expensive to translate it all. So cheers to Destineer for stepping up and doing it right.

Secondly are the undo/redo functions that digital writing offers. The game allows you to write-in in pencil or ink so you can jot down potential answers in pencil before setting them in ink. Of course you can still erase and delete till your hearts content. If you're really stuck there's clues available and outright answers if it comes down to that.

The game offers a few ways to input your answers as well, using either an on-screen keyboard or handwriting recognition. Personally I found the recognition to not quite be up to snuff and instead spent my time on the keyboard. I found myself sometimes writing a letter 3 or 4 times to get it to input what I wanted. Maybe it's not a problem that everyone will have, but to me it was pretty frustrating.

To be honest that was my biggest problem with the game over all. The navigation around the puzzles makes sense, I never got confused about where I was writing and had no problems seeing the board clearly. If the handwriting recognition was up to par I'd be relatively complaint free!

All in all it offers enough over the standard book version that given the choice between the two you'd be silly to go for the old analog version.

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