Black Ink: Crossword Puzzles Without the Ink

If you’ve ever done a crossword puzzle, you know how annoying it is if you fill in a word wrong with a pen, or if you rip or even lose the actual puzzle. Sure, you could go to the newspaper’s web page; the only problem is that these usually look bad, and they are nearly impossible to save. Some of them even use Flash, which will severely slow down your computer. Well, Red Sweater’s Black Ink has finally brought crossword puzzles into the 21st century, and onto your Mac.

When you open Black Ink, you will notice that there are 9 different newspapers that you can choose from. Nine newspapers all in one app! The difference, though, is that you can actually have as many as you want! If you go to Web Puzzles in Black Ink’s preferences and hit the New Source button, you can add a new puzzle. Just give it a URL, a name, and the days the puzzle is out, and you’re off! Although this feature doesn’t work for some newspapers, it does work for the most common ones.

For those with bad eyesight, one of the most important features is auto highlighting of the clue you are looking at. Black Ink will highlight the squares on the puzzle that correspond to the clue you have selected. Instead of having to look around for the squares, they are right there for you! I don’t have horrible eyesight, but I still love this feature.

Another feature for those with bad eyesight is the resizing of the puzzle. This may sound like a ‘meh’ feature, but it really isn’t. When you drag the corner of the window, instead of just resizing the window, and maybe the puzzle, Black Ink does much more. It resizes the puzzle, every letter typed in, and all the symbols in each box. So if you need it bigger, everything gets proportionally bigger. And if you want it smaller, everything gets proportionally smaller.

Black Ink has two types of ‘hints’ that it can give you. The first type is just checking your answer. So, if you don’t want to cheat, you just highlight the word you want to check (on the puzzle), and go to Solution > Check > Current Word. Black Ink will put X’s next to the wrong letters, and check marks next to the right letters. You can also just check the current letter, or the entire puzzle this same way; just go to Solution > Check > (the one you want to do).

The other type of ‘hint’ that Black Ink can give you is the actual word. Just highlight the spaces and go to Solution > Reveal > Current Word. Now, don’t think you can just cheat your way through the whole puzzle, because Black Ink will put a little eye on all of the letters you revealed. Using the same method, you can reveal the entire puzzle, a single letter, or all of the letters that are incorrectly marked by you. These are all located in the Solution > Reveal menu.

Now, one more thing for you paper and pen lovers. Black Ink allows you to easily print out copies of your favorite crossword puzzles. Just go to File > Print, and Black Ink does the rest. It sets up the page to look like a real crossword puzzle, with clues on the bottom and side. So, if you won’t have access to the internet or newspaper for a bit, just print out some old ones that you haven’t done!

Black Ink, by Red Sweater, has finally given Mac users the best of both worlds with crossword puzzles. It has given us an amazing interface to solve out crosswords on the computer, and an easy way to print them out with a more classic interface. The only small downside is the price. It costs $24.95. Most online crossword puzzles are free, and this price may turn some users off. However, I think it is an extremely good tool for doing crossword puzzles, and I think some of you may find that it’s worth the money.

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