iSolve vs Advanced Crossword Solver
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
iSolve
This app assists with word puzzles like crosswords and anagrams, and solves Sudoku puzzles. It features a large dictionary and an intuitive interface for quick lookups without an internet connection.
- Crossword and word puzzle assistance
- Anagram solver
- Sudoku solver
- Large dictionary (396,975 words)
- Offline functionality
- Intuitive interface
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iSolve - Crossword, Word Puzzle and Sudoku cheat iSolve is a no frills standalone app to assist you in completing crosswords, solve anagrams, solve Sudoku or just looking at words. Also useful if you do Quordle or Wordle. The dictionary contains 396,975 words of up to 25 letters. The app is very simple to use. By default when you start the app you start from the screen for assisting you to solve crossword puzzles. Touch the text area in the searchbar at the top of the screen and the keyboard will appear. Enter the word pattern that you wish to solve using the space key for any missing characters. The searchbar will display a ? character each time you tap the space key. As an example if you are looking for a six letter word starting with a 'w' and ending with an 'e' you would enter w????e. (Remember you use the spacebar to enter the ?) There is no need to tap the search key as the app finds all possible words as you enter the letters in the searchbar. For the example given you will get 86 results. This count is displayed just below the searchbar. Once you have the list of words displayed you may either tap the cancel button or tap any of the results displayed to hide the keyboard. This will allow you to scroll down through the list of results. To solve anagrams tap the button at the bottom of the screen. Now you are in anagram mode, and as before you may tap the searchbar to display the keyboard and then use the keyboard to enter the letters in the anagram. The results are displayed as before. To solve Sudoku puzzles just enter the puzzle and click the solve button. You'll have the solution in seconds. Features. No need to connect to the internet unless using word meaning lookup Operates in landscape or portrait mode Fast, dynamic look-up, no need to tap the search key Intuitive interface Does both word look ups for crosswords and word puzzles Solves anagrams Contains words up to 25 letters Dictionary contains 396,975 words Solves Sudoku puzzles in seconds.
Advanced Crossword Solver
This app assists in solving complex cryptic crosswords and word puzzles. It offers advanced search functionalities beyond simple pattern matching, including anagrams, wildcards, and partial anagrams, utilizing a large database of words and phrases.
- Advanced pattern matching with regular expressions
- Combined pattern and anagram searches
- Wildcard and partial anagram solving
- Subset anagrams for longest word generation
- Search with multiple letter possibilities
- Vowel/consonant symbol searches
- Find near-miss words
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"...anyone grappling with the sort of evil cryptics with no black squares will appreciate its power." - The Sunday Times The Advanced Crossword Solver is a combination of a powerful regular expression-style word matcher and a user-customisable database of nearly 300,000 words and phrases. It is specifically designed to help with solving advanced thematic crosswords such as The Times’ Listener and The Sunday Telegraph’s Enigmatic Variations, but is also useful for word games such as Scrabble and Boggle, and indeed for any other word puzzles or games, for logic problems and as an aid to crossword setting. Unlike most crossword solving programs, this is far more than a simple pattern matcher for unknown letters. It can be used as a pattern matcher, and can solve simple anagrams, but in addition, some of its more powerful features include: • search for a combined pattern and anagram, when you know the answer is an anagram, and you also know where some of the letters are. • search with wildcards, when you know that an answer includes a particular letter or string of letters, but not where in the word they are. • solve partial anagrams, when you know that some of the letters of an answer are an anagram, but other letters are unknown. • solve subset anagrams, when you want to find the longest word you can make from a given set of letters. • search with multiple possibilities for letters, when you know a letter is one of a few possibilities, but not which one it is. • search with letter variables, when you know that several letters are the same, but not which letter it is. • search with vowel and consonant symbols, when you know that a letter is either a vowel or a consonant, but not which letter it is. • search for all the words which are one misprinted letter away from another word. • search for words which match a given pattern but which have one or more misprinted letters. • search for pairs of words (across and down) which cross at an unknown letter. Using the simple input syntax, complex combinations of the above can be searched to quickly narrow down to a solution. Even the most complex search takes no more than a few seconds, and results are clearly presented in a scrollable list. Tapping on a result from the solver shows a menu which allows the result to be looked up in a choice of iPhone dictionary and thesaurus applications, including Chambers and WordWeb, or online. This menu can be customised to add your own choice of applications and websites. (Note that in order to link to a dictionary, it must offer a URL that can be used by other apps - check with the publisher of your chosen dictionary that this is the case.) The word list used by the Solver is a combination of the UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary (UKACD) and the Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon (ENABLE). The UKACD is compiled by a crossword puzzle enthusiast from the words and phrases that are found in typical British advanced cryptic puzzles. ENABLE is an authoritative list of Scrabble words valid in both US and UK games. Between the two lists, the program searches a database of over 298,000 words and phrases. The word list used by the solver is stored as plain text files, and the files can be accessed via iTunes to allow them to be customised to your own requirements - words can be added or removed, or the entire word list can be replaced if desired. In addition, the symbols used to denote the input syntax can also be changed, making the entire operation of the solver customisable to your own requirements. If your taste in puzzles extends to the truly challenging, this is the application for you.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Advanced Crossword Solver at 5.0 against iSolve's 1.7. Advanced Crossword Solver also leads on review sentiment (65% vs 33%) and update cadence (every 6 months vs every 14 months). iSolve's advantage is price ($0.99 vs $4.99) and ratings volume (6 vs 1). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
iSolve costs $0.99 and Advanced Crossword Solver $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Advanced Crossword Solver holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 1.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: iSolve has 6 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 33% of iSolve's written reviews are positive against 65% of Advanced Crossword Solver's.
iSolve ships an update every 14 months, Advanced Crossword Solver every 6 months. The most recent releases landed on September 8, 2026 and September 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | iSolve | Advanced Crossword Solver |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 — better | $4.99 |
| Rating | 1.7 (6 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 33.3% of reviews | 64.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 14 months | Every 6 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.2 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 12 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Telphasa Limited | KuDaTa Software |
Customer experience
iSolve
Advanced Crossword Solver
In-app purchases
iSolve
No in-app purchases
Advanced Crossword Solver
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is iSolve free?
Is Advanced Crossword Solver free?
Which has better reviews, iSolve or Advanced Crossword Solver?
Do iSolve or Advanced Crossword Solver have ads?
Which is updated more often, iSolve or Advanced Crossword Solver?
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