Puzzle Maker App Reviews

When I first bought the app, it was quite good and user friendly. That did not last and with new updates the app became less user friendly. After the last OS update, this app won’t open at all. Buyer beware.

This app works well. I like the way it exports to Pages as well as letting you create a PNG file and a TXT file if you want to put the puzzle together yourself. The only suggestion I have is that it should allow you to add words just by clicking on return instead of requiring you to click on the + button. That would speed up the puzzle making process.

It does exactly what it should do when creating a crossword puzzle. Very intuitive to use. I would recommend tha an export in MS Word be added to the next version.

I got this program this past week and put two different puzzles together for two different classes that I teach. While my students were working on the word searches, I took a closer look at them myself. I was shocked to find out how many "J"s and "Q"s were randomly scattered all over the word search. It almost seemed as if it wasnt a letter in one of the words I put down that this program put down either a "J" or a "Q" to fill space. One one line, there were SEVEN "Q"s in a row going across. Ridiculous! Makes the puzzles easy to solve as you can rule out so many options. I hope the creators of this program update it and fix the distribution of random letters throughout the word searches to make them better, especially given the high price of the program. Ive fooled around with free ones online that do a much better job at this than the Puzzle Maker program here. It has potential, but needs a big fix badly! Until then, I cant really recommend it to anyone or give it anything more than just 3 stars.

Puzzles work awesome, but Id like to be able to add background pictures for the web export. Also if you accidently hit "Build Puzzle" instead of "Export" theres no way of escaping out. How about a fix for that? Other than that, app is good! Fix these things and itll be great!!

Good basic crossword program. Wants in no particular order: multilingual support, be able to play the crossword in the app too (paper is a dying medium), charge 1/2 the price

Finally found this app to create both crossword and word searches for my grade 2 class. Easily customizable to put our weekly spelling lists in. Thanks so much!!

This is a great app. There are several free services on the web for making crossword puzzles, but this app is well worth the money for any teacher, or person that creates lots of puzzles. I had several suggestions with the current version and I emailed the developer today. An acutal person replied in a few hours with a code to download the most recent version that is just wainting for Apple approval. The best part is that all of my suggestions were already included in the next release. Clearly, this developer thinks ahead. Thanks so much for the great app! From one teacher to the next…I highly recomend this app.

Love this app. I use it for making chapter reviews for students a little more interesting. So much flexibility, and I love that you can import a CSV file as a word list. Every update just gets better and better!

Easy program to use until you try to print the crossword puzzle, once you hit the printer icon or open up the print option under "file," it crashes the program. The crash window does give me an option to re-open the app, but it always opens iCal instead. Very frustrating...

I havent been able to make even one puzzle, it crashes every time. I want a refund now!

I am pleased with this app so far. Ive created a couple of word searches and crossword puzzles playing with different options and its one of the best Ive come across. Came across a minor bug with background images. When you add a background image the document is marked as changed so we can save it. Now if I adjust the opacity for the background image it also marks the document as changed so we can save it. However the opacity change does not seem to be saved into the document, if I open the document again the image is back to 100% opacity. I would also like to suggest improving the creation/setting of the title header for the document - it was not obvious and I really only stumbled on the help page about how to do it. Perhaps add it to the Inspector or put a some sort of indicator on the screen to inform users they can click in that area, or just default the cursor to blinking there in edit mode. Keep up the great work!

I bought this several years ago and thought to try it again. I updated and it’s the most current version. It does what it claims to do but with some limitations: 1) I cannot simply copy and past from a vocabulary list I have for my students so I literally have to type every single word and definition in for an entire textbook (25 chapters) 2) I tried to paste using control-v but this just caused the program to freeze 3) I thought I’d make a word search puzzle where I provide the definitions and have the students recall the word and then find it…apparently this cannot be done. Presently I’m searching for other possible resources.