For an extra challenge, I try to solve it without looking at the clues, and only using the theme. (some themes are harder than others) Though if a word turns orange, I sort of glance at the clues to see whether it's the wrong direction or built incorrectly. Maybe they could be different colours, like red/orange? Thanks for making it!

I usually solve the across words with the clues and then try to do the down words without the clues.

It would be nice if the board were a little bigger to give you more room to try and organize the wordlets (not sure what to call the letter groups?) and try different arrangements.

Oh that's an interesting play style! It's fun to learn about the challenges players layer on to the base game.

Good feedback about the board size... that's tricky. The problem is that many people play on their phones with small screens. If I increase the grid size then each individual tile shrinks. In my testing that can make it harder for people with poor vision to read the tiles and also make it harder to use the touch controls.

But, I agree on desktop it would be really nice to have more space. I may explore letting people configure the grid size when they submit custom puzzles and use that as a test of larger grids!

I play on full size Ipad, FWIW. You might be able to check viewport size and scale accordingly?

For sure, the tricky thing there is that people share their scores and compete.

It seems unfair to give a larger grid to some players than others.

This is good feedback, thanks!

I want to add an official “clue-less” mode in the future as a more difficult setting.

I’ll add a note to distinguish “built wrong” from “wrong direction”

Another option here is an auto-rotate if assembled in the wrong orientation.

Oh yeah this is a good idea as well. I could merge the tiles if you build a word in the wrong direction, then let you spin them. Hmm…