If you are a puzzle fiend and have an Android phone, these games are great for you. The best part is that they are all free from the Android market. The games have been selected because they are short play. Unlike Chess, Reversi, Scrabble or other long, challenging games, you can play them quickly on the train or bus without giving up an entire afternoon…but that doesn’t mean you won’t become addicted.
Word up (Anthrological)- a great word game that is similar to Bogle. It is so addicting and quite difficult. The idea is that you get letters in a grid, and you have to form as many words as possible by connecting adjacent letters. The interface is touchscreen and you connect the letters by dragging your finger along. It can be timed, untimed, and one or two players.
Traffic jam (Jiuzhang Tech Ltd)- a fun puzzle game that is similar to the game Rush Hour. There are cars on a grid that you can move around by dragging them on the screen. The object of the game is to get your car to the exit by rearranging all of the other cars. It starts out quite easy and quickly gets very difficult.
AndTangle (Nicolas Gramlich)- the game for you graph theorists (or not). It’s quite challenging, but in a different way than the previous two. There are nodes that are connected by lines to other nodes. When the game starts, the lines connecting the nodes are all tangled. Your job is to arrange the nodes by dragging them so none of the connecting lines are crossed. It’s fun, but can get frustrating in the later stages because one node may screw up your whole plan. The only annoying thing about it is it doesn’t save your progress.
Word game (Craig Hart)- another great word game, kind of like Scrabble, but without the board. You are given seven letters and you goal is to make the word with the most points (based on Scrabble scoring) out those seven letters. You choose the letters by touching them on the screen. You can change in letters, but unlike in scrabble, you can see what those letters are ahead of time. Make as many words as you can before time runs out.
TwentyFour (era.yeung) – challenging arithmetic game, much like the game you may have played as a kid. You are given four numbers. Using each number exactly once, you must make an expression by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing the numbers. It’s harder than it sounds. The expressions are made by selecting the numbers and operations on the touchscreen.
These games are ad-sponsored, but the ads are pretty benign and do not affect play.
