This is a very slick little application! Some random thoughts:
It wasn't obvious to me that the anagram clues were anagrams. Woul it really kill you to spell out "anagram?" Maybe even put "Anagram:" before the clue instead of putting it in parentheses afterwards?
What's the point of the "play" button? Why not just give the user a puzzle right out of the gate?
The delete key should let me delete a letter, and probably go back to the previous letter.
There should be some way to choose the direction of my typing with the mouse when I click a square that starts both an across and a down arrow. For example, perhaps add a little "right" arrow and a little "down" arrow in opposite corners of the square that users can push? At the very least, if I'm entering a "down" word and I click a square in that word that's also part of an "across" word, it's confusing for it to switch to the across word.
Let people make their own puzzles. A really easy way to do this would be to simply ask the user to enter 40 or 50 word-clue pairs, which you could then assemble into a new puzzle. This might also be a source for new clue ideas.
Relatedly: let users rate clues. This will allow you to refine your database. Your rating options might be something like "Hard," "medium," "easy," and "unfair." Clues that get several "unfair" ratings could be automatically weeded out of the database. Once you had a substantial database of ratings for clues, you could offer puzzles with varying difficulty levels based on the ratings.
clutu is a crossword game you can play online with your friends.
I've been working on it every evening and a couple of weekends for six weeks now, after being inspired by counttonine.com
If you want to play clutu fast, you can instantly see what your friends are doing thanks to ajax. If you prefer to play slower you can bookmark your game and/or subscribe to an rss feed for it.
clutu runs in sbcl, using hunchentoot as its web server, on an ubuntu vps. Crosswords are generated continuously and the best ones are kept in a pool so that a request for a new game is quick if the pool isn't empty.
Most fun thing so far: finding a very fast way to generate anagrams.
Least fun thing so far: trying to get invite emails past spam filters - I spent more than a week on this and it's still not reliable.
Yeah, my first thought was: Facebook app it! A good tie in might be to generate crosswords based on your friends' names, and make the clues be based on their interests, wall posts, or something like that. Hmm, actually this sounds interesting, give me a holler if you'd like a collaborator ;)
Sometimes single-clicking on a square made that square get the next letter typed, sometimes it didn't. Other than that it seemed smooth.
I don't think there's a reliable route past spam filters for any kind of web-site invite. You might give users some text to cut/paste into their own email to friends.
I observed the bug on Firefox/XP. The only reliable way I could reproduce it was to move the mouse slightly so that the letter was briefly selected when I clicked. It might be a case of just moving quickly/selecting. I think it might sometimes happen apart from that, but it's possible that it's the same thing but with deselection happening quickly.
I think cryptic crossword players would be particularly interested in this. There is a significant amount of kudos associated with solving an unusual clue and therefore perhaps more desire for users to share solutions with the community/collaborate on solutions. I know avid fans of the Times (UK) crossword who pass their part-complete solutions back and forth throughout the day, your app would be an easier way for them to collaborate. For more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_crosswords
I claim that one of the best features you could add is a feedback mechanism in the site. At the minimum, stick "Report a bug, Request a feature" as a link on all of the pages. Then give the user a simple text field to type their comment into. If you want to go fancier, I think iminlikewithyou.com has a nice feedback mechanism. (The implication being that you could look at their site and steal the mechanism :) )
I'd like feedback in the list of clues as to what ones have been filled in so I can scan the list of clues looking for the next one to work on. Perhaps indicate which ones I have answered compared to everyone else.
Also, it was a little jarring for the clues to be all lower-case. I think frequent crossword solvers may be used to each clue being a sentance with a full-stop, even if it's just "Begin." Unless that varies by nation.
If you are having problems with legitimate email being stopped by spam there are a number of ways to improve your odds of getting through. What email address - your domain or the email of the person doing the invite? Do you have SPF records set up? Reverse DNS? What does dnsstuff.com have to say about your IP being in any spam databases? Or DNSreport have to say about your domain?
I've tried every suggestion from every article I could find on the subject - SPF is set up; DKIM is set up; dns records are fine according to every checker I could find; SpamAssassin doesn't report anything bad; the IP's not in any blacklist I could find.
I don't know if it is a conflict with one of my firefox extensions, but when I type a letter, it gets in the box, but also starts the firefox quick search. Every letter after that only goes into the quick search. So to write a word I have to click on every single box. Definitely annoying. But again, could just be a conflict on my machine. That's firefox 2.0.0.4 on gentoo linux
The puzzle itself looks nice, but I think there is a slight contrast problem with the black-to-white fading of the white squares against the black background. It just feels slightly off, no big deal.
However: You've clearly got some bad bugs in this. I went to answer "Country whose capital is Tehran" and it took a good minute before I could enter the answer. I clicked on it, the correct row highlighted green, and when I went to type "I", the second letter filled in "I". Then I pressed the first square of four, but the attached (horizontal) row highlighted. So I clicked on the IRAN squares again, typed I-R-A-N, it didn't work, and after some fiddling, I typed it again, and it seemed to enter I-I-A-N, then I-I-I-N, then it highlighted the last square, which flashed I then R then A then N as I typed them, then finally I typed it again, it seemed to go I-I-I-I, then changed to IRAN, finally. ???
I tested a little more, and the worst problem seem to be that in a situation like this:
EDIT: I can't get the formatting to work, but picture a horizontal "HELLO" with "LEMON" coming off the HELLO's second "L".
... and you click on the "l" in lemon, it highlights "hello". You really should NEVER have ambiguity like that. Maybe a second click should alternate between them.
Nevermind, I'm stupid, it does work [the double-clicking].
But lesson learned: Other people are going to be stupid, too.
And apparently my earlier problems were due to latency. If you go too fast, the updates come up a little oddly, and the letters switch 1) When you type, 2) A moment later to something historical, and 3) Back to what you typed.
This is the sort of concept that you infinitely play around with. Some ideas for your to-do list:
1. Widgetize it
2. I know its collaborative, but throw in a few features that cater to the solo user
3. Add in some kind of top-score list or top-user list and put on home page
4. Screen shot of game on home page
5. Allow users to pick games based on predefined categories and difficulty levels
6. Allow users to race against a clock to complete the puzzle if they want.