Puzzling

My marketing and promotions department (me) told me that I should do a little plug for our CrypticGuide app . Plug plug plug ... This is an app that took us over a year to develop — my husband had to do vast amounts of tricky iOS database programming, and I had to write the vast database of info! So, what is  it? It's a handy little cryptic dictionary — so you can enter a word from a cryptic clue, and if it's in our database, CrypticGuide can tell you that there's an abbreviation arising from that word, or maybe it's an anagram indicator, or has some funny cryptic meaning, or is a homophone. So, in the example here (which shows the iPad version), if you type in the word 'about', you'll see that the word 'about', found in a cryptic clue, could lead to a few cryptic synonyms (circa, on, a fight), a range of abbreviations (A, C, CA, RE), and a bunch of cryptic indicators (anagram indicator, container indicator etc). Unlike other cryptic...

I'm so happy to announce that our latest app, CrypticGuide, has been approved by Apple today, and is now available on the App Store ! CrypticGuide has a cryptic dictionary with over 6,900 entries in it, with cryptic synonyms, indicator words, abbreviations, and homophones. So you can type in a word or short phrase from a cryptic clue, like 'see' - and the app will tell you that see  can lead to the words ELY (a UK diocese, or see , name), LO, or VIDE ( see in Latin); the abbreviations C (sounds like see ), V, or VID ( see in Latin again); it can indicate a container or hidden word wordplay device; and it's a homophone for sea ! So this will hopefully help you a lot with cracking cryptic clues. The app also has a wildcard search for filling in gaps in the grid you really can't get out, and an anagram solver, which brings up exact anagrams and subwords. Very helpful if you feel like getting a little cheaty in Scrabble ®, Words With Friends , Boggle , ...