Sphinx

Sphinx is a crossword puzzle that’s built to experiment with a different way of finding words and solving the sheet. Unlike with the classic ones, where you get a brief definition or a hint of what the word is, here you have nothing but the randomness of how the game actually helps you.

With Sphinx, that’s mostly what you do, solve a crossword puzzle while actually building it because there is not fixed template to it, no word/solution theme or any kind of setting to it. You get an initial setup for the puzzle and a starting letter, similar to how a game of Scrabble starts and you have to create the words around it. You can even remove the black squares.

Three additional letters are also provided and you can place them in the puzzle as anchors or hints for new words that you plan on using. Clicking a letter has the application lookup words that incorporate that letter into an existing word that would actually fit. This is a nice feature for the game but it’s also the thing which confuses you the most.

The auto-find feature of Sphinx is interesting but it’s a bit rough around the edges. Clicking a letter generates a list with possible words that can be used and clicking one adds it. On the other hand, you can only use those words and there’s a strong chance that none of them fit with what you actually want.

For example, having a four letter word that starts with N won’t generate ‘NEON’ as an answer. Moreover, there’s no alphabet from which to extract the letters you want in order to add the letters for the word you prefer. On some level, only being able to use what words the game gives you can be challenging, like seeing ten steps ahead in a chess game, but some of the words you get are non-existing or just too strange for you to think of them in advance.

To sum things up, Sphinx brings a rather interesting concept on how you can play crossword puzzles but it’s rather flawed in terms of execution. However, Sphinx is a fresh game that has plenty of time ahead to figure out some things.