Crostix

Welcome to the world of acrostics! An acrostic, also called a crostic or double crostic, is a cousin of crossword puzzles, with clues and answers whose letters are rearranged to form a quote from a famous (or not-so-famous) author. If you're familiar with acrostics, you will quickly see how convenient they are on the iPhone, because letters are automatically copied to the correct place as you type them in.

Crostix, the online library of acrostic puzzles, is now available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It includes 150 puzzles, from easy to fiendishly hard, and you can buy more puzzles right in the application. For free sample puzzles, download the aptly-named Crostix Free.

The program has all the features you'd expect:

- get hints for a single letter or an entire word,

- see your score, based on how many hints you needed,

- change the font size by pinching,

- rotate the device as you like, and

- get help on all program options.

If you're new to the world of acrostics, the application also includes a short tutorial to get you started.