Rules

The goal of Crux is to make a crossword out of the given letters.

Move the letters by tapping a letter and then the square you want it to occupy or by dragging the letter into position. Words can only be oriented horizontally or vertically—this is not for those of you who like to make diagonal crosswords, sorry—and the words you create will be checked against a spelling list. If your word is correct according to the list, it will flash from left to right (or up to down).

You can add letters to your board—for instance if you have a Q with no U and don't want to use a word like FAQIR, adding a “wildcard” letter is allowed. Simply double-tap on a square, which will create a “?” tile. For example, if you need a “U” to spell QUART, you can add a wildcard to make it look like this: Q?ART. If a wildcard tile is crossed by two words, it can stand in for a different letter for each word.

Points

The score in Crux is found by taking the sum of the squares of the lengths of each word, multiplied by the length of the shortest word. For each wildcard used, the score is then halved. For example, if your crossword has two words with seven letters and one with six, your score would be (7² + 7² + 6²) × 6 = 804