A New Game, for Me

Monday morning I was on Facebook and saw a post about a game called Zanagrams. It isn’t an anagram game as the title suggests, as I was hoping, but I do like it anyway.

It is played on iPhone and iPad, and the guy who developed it served in the Marines, and tried to kill himself afterward. Because of that suicide attempt he became blind and he’s in a wheelchair if I’m not mistaken.

In each word puzzle you are presented with a clue as to what the one-word answer should be. After each clue there is a number indicating how many letters are in that answer. As you flick right, you’ll see other clues to words, then you’ll see what your spelling is so far, if you’ve started. There’s also a shuffle button, then you’ll see the letter groups. As you figure out what the answers are, you’ll hit these buttons in order to put them in to your spelling. The program automatically detects when you spell an answer correctly and that clue then has your solved word after it.

It is important to point out that one needs to be a good speller to play this game.

There were a couple of words I wasn’t familiar with, that is, for their meaning in the context of the clue. For instance, noodling is supposedly the catching of catfish using one’s bare hands. This I didn’t know and had to grab one of my ten free clues. Another term I wasn’t familiar with was catfishing, which in this instance meant to be untruthful about your identity online. I didn’t need a clue for this though, as I’d eliminated enough of the letter groups to be able to figure out what the remaining word was.

In conclusion, though it isn’t an anagram game, I’m very fond of anagram games, I do rather enjoy figuring out the clues. I’ve had perfect scores for the third and fourth puzzle in the word salad category. I didn’t do all that well in the first two that I did. So, this game is quite challenging and I’m definitely enjoying it. The game won an Applevis award last year, and it’s well deserved!

6 comments

  1. It’s free but it does have in-app purchases, which I failed to mention in my write-up. There are clues you can buy once you’ve used up your ten free ones. There are more puzzle packs to buy once you’ve completed the two that are included. I haven’t looked at the second puzzle pack yet but I’m assuming there are ten puzzles in that pack as there are in the first one. Word salad and outer space are the two that come free in the game. I think you can buy music for the game, which I don’t need and won’t buy.

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