Top 4 Apps for Word Lovers
1. Word A Day Pictures & Audio ($1.99).
The title of this app tells its story. Every day, the app presents you with a new word. Most of the words are common-like mine today, "nirvana"-making the app perfect for refreshing you on words you've read dozens of times but whose definitions, for whatever reason are kind of hazy. A brightly colored cartoon gives life to each definition, a handy memento that's likely to give you an edge in remembering the word. For "nirvana," a beaming man is kicked back in a hammock suspended from the only two palm trees growing on a desert island, and you can almost hear the tunes playing from his bedside radio. On this app, you can take a quiz of past words of the day. Also, bookmark favorite words in an alphabetized list.
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2. 7 Little Words (Free). If you're a fan of thinking word games like crosswords, Scrabble, and Scattergories, you'll love 7 Little Words. After playing a first game, you'll quickly play ten more. The app is dangerously fun. Each puzzle consists of seven clues, crossword-style hints at a word that you must guess from the bank of scrambled letters ("DE," "RR," "OTS," etc.) at the bottom of the screen. Next to each clue is a second clue: the number of letters in the mystery word. For your first word, you may be primed with something like "chess piece" and "six letters." After some quick thinking, you'd put together "KN," "IG," and "HT" for "knight." It seems simple, but some of the clues are downright vexing, especially those in the more challenging puzzle of the day. In fact, if you can think of a word for the clues "7 letters" and "boot straps," please post it in the comments section below.
3. Textropolis (Free). This quirky app challenges you to find all of the possible words that can be made from rearranging the letters that spell out the name of a world city. It's an anagram game of sorts, only not all of the starting word's letters have to be used. Each city is a level of the game. You start with Kingstown, a city in St. Vincent. The object is to find the 95 words that can be strung together using the letters "k," "i," "n" "g," "s," "t," "o," "w," and "n." On your device's screen is an animated version of Kingstown, a skyline featuring, to start, only a single palm tree. First, you'll probably see "king," then maybe "twig." Type in the corresponding letters, hit submit, and above the lone tree a plane will fly, dragging a banner that shares details about the word you've found. Enter a few words and a building will rise next to the palm tree. Get all 95, and you will have built Kingstown, Edinburgh, Santa Rosa, or whatever city whose letters you have been reordering. You will learn new words on the path to finding all of them, and chances are many of these words will be of the short, punch-packing breed, such as "wonk."
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4. American Heritage Dictionary ($24.99). If you've read this far in a post about the best apps for word nerds, you'll probably find it worth parting with a Jackson and a Lincoln to have the ultimate word lover's app. We learn new words, in large part, from the various definitions listed next to them in dictionaries. The more precise these definitions, the more airtight and lucid our understanding of the words they define. The fabulous American Heritage Dictionary offers trim, forward-thinking definitions that take into account how words are changing. From a panel of experts, you get hints on how to use words. You can also group words into folders or check the history of words you've looked up. It's a new-school version of a time-tested tool for making unfamiliar words familiar. But if more casual apps are more your thing, stick to the three listed above.
What are your favorite word-related apps? Let me know in the comments!
--by Christofer Malloy
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