Spellsquares [$1.99 / HD], an atmospheric word puzzle game from Benthic Games, hit the App Store with its iPad version back in June. We missed out on it then, but we picked the game up on its iPhone release this month. It's right at home on the small screen, maintaining an enchanting mix of exploration and challenging puzzles.

In Spellsquares' story mode, you find yourself wandering a castle with a mystery to solve. A mysterious stranger has left notes to guide you on your way (kind of him, since you're out to foil his nefarious plan). Each door, treasure and point of interest is blocked with a word puzzle that you'll need to solve. The puzzles are crafted like Sudoku for words. A square grid is laid out with a few letters already in place. A pool of available letters sits to the side. Your job is to use those letters to make words in every row and column at once -- easy puzzles require three-letter words and the hardest require five. Solving them takes a little bit of logic and a touch of vocabulary. Once you factor in hints, you'll also need a dash of strategy.

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Ever since the moment as a child where I first saw Kyle MacLachlan crush a metal-underpantsed Sting with the force of a single word in Dune, I’ve wanted a game that gave me that same feeling of power. Any time I re-watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the holodeck is featured, I find myself wishing that spoken controls were a bigger part of gaming. I mean, TNG accurately predicted the tablet computer, why can’t we have voice commands that work, too?

Discounting rhythm games like Rock Band where vocal input allows for no deviation, the only contemporary title I can think of that has tackled the problem with any degree of competency is Tom Clancy’s End War. Unfortunately, voice controls in games are essentially like tequila shots. They sound like the best idea in the world at the time, but a few hours later you just end up disoriented, frustrated, and violently nauseous. It was in such a cavalier mood that I chose to pick up Starglow Magic Spells [Free], and I am now paying the price.

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Most music-based games are based on the same premise: interaction with the rhythm or beat of the song in some form or fashion. That’s why Say What?! [Free] seems like such an interesting take on the genre; rather than interacting with the musical composition, the game challenges you to interact with the actual lyrics. While I think that Say What?! is definitely one of the more interesting takes on the genre that I’ve seen, a very limited selection of music coupled with a lack of gameplay diversity leaves it somewhat wanting.

The premise of Say What?! is simple: as lyrics to a song are displayed at the top of the screen various images scroll across the bottom portion from right to left. When portions of the lyrics light up, you must tap on the image that corresponds to the highlighted lyric.

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Scryptic [$1.99] from LKS GameWorks looks like a traditional Scrabble game. It has a board and letter tiles sitting on a rack, but trust me, the gameplay is VERY different. Two players start in different positions on the board and use words to combat each other. Each player can either build up words defensively around their starting point ("city"), or spread out towards the opposition, in an offensive attack. Sometimes there's additional city squares to be claimed, which can spark a word-race across the board to get there first, as cities offer extra protection.

There's not a 'double word score' or 'triple letter score' in sight. Instead, the squares on the board each represent terrain, like mountains, forests and water. And the rules around each type of terrain make this game really interesting. I'll give you two examples to demonstrate.  If you want to place your word on a blue water square, you must  form a bridge, by ensuring the first and last letter of your word are not in the water.  Whereas ice squares will crack and turn to water if you place any "heavy" letters worth 2+ points on them, drowning your entire word. The game mechanics may seem a little complicated initially, but the game walks you gently through the rules with tutorial levels and help screens, so you learn it pretty quickly. Although I took some notes, which proved helpful.

How does the combat work? Well, you simply deploy a word on top of, or adjacent to, the opponents word(s) to attack them. This isn't like scrabble where your letters need to fit in with the opponents words. You just link your own words together until your word-network reaches the enemy, then drop your word right over theirs to battle. The highest scoring word will be victorious, causing the defeated word to disappear. You can even cut off the opponents supply chain, by destroying connecting words to leave other words isolated and defenseless. It's like playing two different games of scrabble on one board, against each other.

The terrain also has an impact on combat. If your word crosses a mountain square, you have a higher-ground advantage so your word is strengthened. But if your word crosses water, it's weakened. And if you're fortunate enough to find a power token in the game, you can create "elemental forces" such as volcanoes, firestorms, droughts and floods, to strategically modify the terrain. I haven't discovered any of these yet, but I'm itching to flood my opponents words.

Your choice of words makes a difference, as the game is programmed to detect words associated with four topics:  Attacking, defense, sneaking or deforesting. So if you place a word like "kill"  or "sword" it automatically gains extra attacking power, whereas words like "fortify" or "shield" add defensive power. If you discover a word associated with one of these four headings is not rewarded, don't despair - you can add words via the options screen, or advise the developers via their word feedback form and they'll add it in.

The game ends when you capture your opponents city square(s) and you're rewarded by some obnoxiously loud trumpet blasts. Seriously, the occasional sound effects are not great. The game also ends if the letter tiles are all used or when both players pass twice in a row, in which case the player with the most points wins. Phew! That's enough about the rules. Although they are quite fascinating. It's quite unusual for the rules of a game to be a highlight!

Scryptic manages to successfully turn Scrabble into a strategic combat situation. You can play against a friend using pass-and-play or battle the AI opposition on 21 unlockable terrain boards, of different sizes. But be warned, this is a game of skill and strategy, and once you've completed the easy levels, the AI definitely steps up his game. The larger boards can take ages to complete, so there's many hours of game-play, plus 12 achievements and rankings via Game Center.

This game is perfect for Scrabble lovers, who enjoy competition and want to add combat to the mix. While playing the game for a few hours, I did experience one crash and a bug, but fortunately neither caused my game or progress to be lost. The developer advises he's currently working on his first patch upgrade. With Wooords and Scryptic both being released recently, plus a new update for Wurdle, it's a good time for word games!

A couple of weeks ago, we sat down with Semi Secret Software’s Adam Saltsman. One of the many topics we covered in the conversation was, of all things, Wurdle [$1.99]. It’s another word game but it’s remarkable because it was one of the first big word game productions to hit the now-word-game cluttered App Store. After assaulting us with his thoughts about developing this initial title, he also dropped that a new update was in the works -- an update that would bring Wurdle into this era of the App Store. That update is now available. PSI Rockin'.

In a nutshell, version 3.0 of Wurdle is a catch-up upgrade. The game now boasts new retina display artwork and Univeral app functionality. More importantly, Game Center multiplayer has been added, as well as same-screen multiplayer for the iPad variant. You can also set time limits, look up word definitions, and even pass-and-play locally on both versions.

The kicker here is that it’s still $1.99, which is a pretty solid price for a good game with a crazy legacy and, obviously, the support of its developer. Check it out if you’re in the mood for some word hijinks or just like looking at pretty retina artwork.

Words With Friends [$1.99 / Free] is headed to Facebook. Social giant Zynga Games announced the platform flip this afternoon with a delightful teaser image. Normally, I’d be a little annoyed by the lack of information, but really, what is there to say? Words with Friends is an extremely simple riff on the Scrabble formula with basic visual do-dads and mechanics that we’ve been enjoying for quite a while on iOS.

I’d imagine the reason we don’t have many details here is tied into the fact that nothing meaningful has been changed, aside from the addition of new Facebook-y social elements.

Let's talk about those for a second. PC Mag is reporting that users will be able to sync their iOS and Android games to this particular version. Also, you'll be able to, somehow, post about your current game on your foes' walls. Cool!

Zynga is heavily invested in Facebook, and as you know, the With Friends creator NewToy was grabbed by the mega publisher earlier last year. It only makes sense that we’re seeing its games (under a new name) on this specific platform, too.

Stray Robot Games is a New Zealand based studio, formed late in 2010 who have just released their first iOS game: Wooords [99¢], a minimalistic word game, which involves sliding fridge-magnets around the screen. You've probably seen puzzles in newspapers (or on the App Store) which involve forming as many words as possible from nine letters. One of the letters is the "key letter" and must appear in each word, and if you manage to put all the letters in the right order, you form an elusive "big word" and earn bonus points.

In Wooords, instead of typing words in (or writing them in a newspaper), you simply slide fridge-magnets around to form words, anywhere on the screen. The letters don't have to be perfectly lined up, just adjoining, as the game is clever enough to detect when a word is formed and you'll be rewarded with a burst of stars, a happy sound and some points. An awful lot of effort went into this design decision, too.

For instance, as you move the fridge-magnets, they make little clinking noises as they collide with each other. If you drag a letter between two other letters, they ease apart to make room. And if you form a larger word, the letters subtly decrease in size, so the word fits on the screen. If you shake your device the letters are randomly re-arranged. It's shocking how well this all works.

There's three game modes to choose from. In 'Classic' mode you have unlimited time to form words, which are rewarded by points and stars. Achieving one star unlocks the next puzzle (30 in total), but real satisfaction comes from obtaining the maximum three stars. This mode is about skill and persistence, rather than speed. The second mode is 'Daily Words', which is a daily competition to rank yourself against yourself, friends or the world. A fresh set of letters is released every 24 hours, which gives this game daily re-playability. And lastly, there's 'Word Jam' which places an emphasis on both speed and skill. The goal is to reach the target score within the word and time limit. This involves completing quick-fire rounds, so speed is definitely a factor here.

Wooords can be played casually for fun, but don't let the cute magnets fool you, this can also be a competitive game of speed, skill and strategy as you climb the Game Center leader-boards. The scoring in the old newspaper puzzles (and similar games) was based on the quantity of words found, with bonus points for nine-letter words. But in Wooords the scoring is far more advanced with multipliers for speed, and the number of syllables, which all contributes to the players score and overall "IQ level" rating.

This cute little game has already become a part of my daily routine. It's fun to fling the magnets into words as quickly as possible and as the developer points out, you're also exercising your brain, by testing your "vocabulary, speed and concentration". Wooords is even a universal game, which sweetens the deal even further.

Even though you might already have a ton of similar word games on your device, the clever refrigerator magnet-powered gameplay feels surprisingly fresh, and makes the UI used in previously released word games flat out seem archaic in comparison. Before downloading, be warned: Wooords will make your actual refrigerator magnets seem unresponsive and far less interesting!

Prose With Bros [Free], the interactive sentence-building game that challenges you and friends to construct the dirtiest things that comes to mind, now has 100 new words. Evil Laugh Games reckons that the title now has around 2,000 as of this free update. Let us all hope that the words “snowball,” “camel,” and “gorilla” have made the final cut.

Words, while as crucial as they are to the experience, aren’t the only things added to the latest build. Evil Laugh on its Facebook page mentions that “various” tweaks and fixes have been included or addressed. The richest tweak we’ve spotted so far is the 24-down-to-12 hour voting time reduction, which should make games a lot snappier. Evil Laugh says it's open to dropping that time even lower moving forward and now you also have the option to cancel out of games hung up on other players' moves.

In a prior update, Retina display visuals were added, as well as capitalization and punctuation, and Twitter support.

Prose With Bros might not be a household name yet, but it’s getting the kind of attention that it needs to be a serious contender. We checked out the title back in April, so give that write-up a look if the asking price of $0 seems too rich.

What's My Word? [$0.99] is a board game port that language lovers simply must check out. If you've played the original with pen and paper, you know what to expect. If not, you're in for a treat.

The goal is to discover a hidden six- or seven-letter word. To find it, you need to come up with other, shorter guess words and enter them in shifted positions along the board. Each guess is scored by how many letters match the hidden word, and whether or not those letters are in the right place.

The scoring is the tricky part. It's the only thing that will tell you if you're on the right track. Correct letters in the wrong spot give you 250 points. Correct letters in the right spot give you 1000 points. You're given the total for the whole word, so you'll need to compare all of your guesses and find the overlapping letters and other giveaways. On your 11th guess, you'll either get the correct word, or not. It feels like a wordy version of the classic board game Mastermind, if that makes it any clearer.

What's My Word? is quite the strategic game. You can try to cover as much of the alphabet as possible with your guesses, but this might leave you with a lot of possible letters and no sure things. If you instead use similar words to track down correct positioning, you might finish the game with only two or three correct letters. Words that score 0 are extremely helpful since all their letters are eliminated, but then you lose that whole word from your total score. To make things even more complicated, you don't necessarily need to guess the correct word to get a high score. Balancing all these factors makes for an interesting challenge.

Though the game design is sound, the port's mechanics leave a little to be desired. The Game Center achievements pop up inconsistently and at weird times. Also, I found myself heading to pen and paper to solve some of the puzzles. The game includes a scratch pad to note down the letters that you're sure of and those you've eliminated, but I just don't find it interactive enough to work through all the logic. Not a huge deal, but it's hard to play on the go when I'm constantly looking for a pen.

For the price of admission, you get 50 potpourri puzzles, and daily six- and seven-letter challenges. The daily challenges have Game Center leaderboards to rank your score. If you'd like more content, there are already 19 extra word packs available for in-app purchase, at a dollar each or 10 bucks for an all-access pass. Categories for the extra packs include things like sports, video games, and movies. I've enjoyed playing the extra content, but if you put a puzzle down partway through it would sure be nice to see which category it's in when you come back.

Unfortunately, the multiplayer aspect of the original game has pretty much been abandoned. You can challenge friends by sending them words with categories, but there's no overarching competitive play. If you want to play with a friend locally, the best you can do is enlist their help over your shoulder while you struggle through the solo challenges.

All in all, though, What's My Word? is a great little package. It's even Universal. If you like your word games to come with a big dose of strategy and logic, you should definitely check it out.

Like asynchronous-multiplayer word games? Then Hanging With Friends [Free / $1.99] is the game for you.

Brought to us by Zynga and the folks behind Words With Friends [Free / $2.99 / HD], Hanging With Friends is a strange-but-fun combination of Hangman and Scrabble. Like other asynchronous titles (and exactly like the other With Friends games), you start a game by finding someone to play with. You can find opponents randomly, or amongst Facebook friends or your contact list. You can also find a friend by their username or play locally with pass and play.

Once you've found a friend to play with, you create a word using a random selection of letter tiles. You have a chance to earn bonus points by positioning your letters on double or triple letter/word score spaces. When your word is made, its your opponent's turn to guess.

Guessing is done in classic hangman style. You have a set number of strikes based on the length of the word (shorter words are harder, so you get more chances with them), and you can pick from all the letters in the alphabet. Guess your opponent's word before running out of strikes, and you live to play another day. Fail, and your cute little avatar loses a balloon and gets closer to falling into the pit of lava below.

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I'm not the biggest crossword person. I love word games and trivia, but crosswords have just never grabbed me. So I'm a little surprised by how much I've enjoyed playing CRUX Crosswords HD [4.99].

Maybe it's the way it manages to capture the feel of playing on paper without all the messy stuff that goes along with actually playing on paper. You can't beat the aesthetic, with each puzzle laid out on a page of virtual newsprint with a nice clean handwritten font. I can almost smell the ink when playing this game.

Or maybe it's all the helpful little features. You can write in pencil or pen mode, so you know which answers you're certain about and which are still iffy. When you highlight a cell, you can see both the clues that intersect it at a glance. If you're getting close but can't pick an answer, use the rebus option to enter up to twelve options per cell. If you're really hard up, you can set the game to double-check your answers or reveal cells, entries, or the whole shebang. That saved me from a shameful trip to Google on a few occasions.

As a newbie, the source list mystifies me a bit. CRUX has a list of nearly 30 sources, split between U.S. and U.K. style puzzles. A few (those from New York Times and Telegraph) require subscriptions to their respective crossword services, which is to be expected. But I'd love to see a little more information on the sources. Are People Magazine puzzles more or less difficult than Onion A.V. Club puzzles? Or Washington Post puzzles? It's pretty much trial and error for me, but if you know your stuff, the hearty source list should be quite satisfying.

You can download each puzzle as it's published online, and once you've got it its yours to keep. A recent puzzles list lets you hop between in-progress or recently downloaded puzzles at will. You can also create user profiles if more than one member of your household has the crossword bug.

Every time I ran into an irritation, a few moments of investigation solved it for me. I was frustrated that the game would skip over already completed cells when I typed in a full entry. Turns out you can toggle that option off. If the timer makes you feel a little too pressured, turn it off too. There are almost too many ways to navigate each puzzle—you can tap on a cell, tap on a clue, swap between intersecting clues, or use the on screen direction pad to move between cells. You can also set CRUX to show only incomplete clues or only those that intersect your current selection. I have yet to run into a feature or convenience I felt was missing, but if you do, the developers have been taking feedback in the forums.

Like I said, I'm a crossword newbie. But CRUX Crosswords HD is pro. It looks fantastic and comes with everything but the kitchen sink packed in to make your crossword solving more convenient. If you enjoy crosswords, you should definitely give it a shot.

In late April, we took a look at Prose With Bros [$1.99 / Free] and were totally impressed by the incredibly unique idea behind the game. Evil Laugh Games successfully turned magnetic poetry into an asynchronous online multiplayer game, complete with players judging the best phrases put together by players.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side of the fence you're on, the game quickly turned into non-stop sexual euphemisms. Initially, they were amusing, but quickly grew fairly tiring for me as everyone I played with seemed to attempt to string together nonsensical nastiness. Will an injection of 300 new words to the game solve this problem? It's hard to say, but it seems worth updating regardless.

And hey, if weird sexual euphemisms with anonymous strangers on the Internet is your cup of tea, you just got 300 new pieces of innuendo ammo!

Word game aficionados, allow me to draw your attention to a freebie you don't want to pass by. 7 Little Words [Free] is a new word game from the creator of Moxie [99¢ / Free] and Moxie 2 [$1.99]. Those games picked up big followings over time, and this should be no different.

7 Little Words uses a super-simple formula that works really well. It feels a bit like a crossword or anagram game, and it's got me pretty hooked. Each puzzle presents you with seven clues for seven mystery words, and twenty two- or three-letter combinations. Put the letter combos together to make words that fit the clues. Your goal in each puzzle is to use up all the letters to create seven words.

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Words With Friends [2.99 / Free / HD] has dominated the multiplayer word game genre on the app store for a long time, but recently some new competitors have elbowed their way in: Kalimat [$2.99 / Free] and Wordfeud [Free]. We've loved Words With Friends since way back when, but it can't hurt to see what the competition has to offer.

Both games are Scrabble-style word games with asynchronous multiplayer - Kalimat through OpenFeint, and Wordfeud through its own system. Both also have free, ad-supported versions to try (Kalimat's cripples some features). But there are a few things that set these games apart from each other.

Wordfeud beat Words With Friends to Android earlier this year and then made its way to the App Store. It's not pretty, with its muted colors and plain interface, but it's quick. I ran into a few small bugs, but nothing game breaking. Currently, it supports six dictionaries, including Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and both English tournament dictionaries (TWL and SOWPODS).

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Surely you're one of the eighty zillion people who have downloaded and played Words With Friends [$2.99 / Free] with friends, family, coworkers, and random weirdos you don't even know. It's a great game that I can't possibly recommend enough, despite the fact that it was recently assimilated into the Zynga borg. If you dig these kinds of asynchronous online multiplayer word games and are looking for a new fix, you've really got to give Prose With Bros [$1.99 / Free]. It follows a similar model as Words With Friends with a fully functional ad-supported version of the game that you can try first, along with an entirely optional $1.99 ad-free version for people who prefer tossing out a couple bucks to being inundated with advertising.

So what's Prose With Bros all about? Well, if the blatantly obvious title didn't give it away, you form prose, with your bros. Each player is given the same set of words, and they've got to string them together in the most amusing way possible. You submit your prose, and a panel of bros judge your work over the next day. Whoever gets more votes wins. Check out this exhaustive walkthrough the developers provided us:

I'm not entirely sure if Prose With Bros will have the insanely long lasting appeal that Words With Friends has had, but if you like silly multiplayer word games, there's really no reason to not download the free version and give it a spin.