Review Insights · App Store
Crosswords With Friends
Zynga Inc. · 61,893 ratings · ★ 4.5
4.5
★★★★★
61,893 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 50 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"puzzles"
19 negative reviews mention this · 38% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Today’s update ruined the app. I know it’s all about making money but this latest update has ruined the app. Others might pay the monthly fee to access the three puzzles but there are better free apps out there. Stuck with this app because i played for years." - NiceManMD
2
"game"
17 negative reviews mention this · 34% of all complaints
★★★★★ "See update below Disputes never in your favor - WORST customer service. Why did the coins for winning the tournament drop drastically? I won 97 coins for first place and today 65 for first place This app expects you to screen shot every move you make in order to prove you completed an offer or have an in game…" - NATEHRH
3
"puzzle"
16 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Today’s update ruined the app. I know it’s all about making money but this latest update has ruined the app. Others might pay the monthly fee to access the three puzzles but there are better free apps out there. Stuck with this app because i played for years." - NiceManMD
4
"been"
14 negative reviews mention this · 28% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Completed packs download fails! Going on for 1 Year!. Completed puzzles packs downloads fail, so we are unable to collect tokens, badges. I have been reporting this issue for close to 1 year. All I ever get is canned replies! It’s like you guys really don’t care about the users experience and …" - Bad IT staff
5
"play"
13 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Today’s update ruined the app. I know it’s all about making money but this latest update has ruined the app. Others might pay the monthly fee to access the three puzzles but there are better free apps out there. Stuck with this app because i played for years." - NiceManMD
6
"years"
10 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Today’s update ruined the app. I know it’s all about making money but this latest update has ruined the app. Others might pay the monthly fee to access the three puzzles but there are better free apps out there. Stuck with this app because i played for years." - NiceManMD
7
"load"
10 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Completed packs download fails! Going on for 1 Year!. Completed puzzles packs downloads fail, so we are unable to collect tokens, badges. I have been reporting this issue for close to 1 year. All I ever get is canned replies! It’s like you guys really don’t care about the users experience and …" - Bad IT staff
8
"playing"
10 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Big Glitch still not fixed.. Been trying for several hours to play the daily crossword, but the game won’t load. Yes, I turned my phone off and on. Yes, I’ve waited and tried again. I am pretty sure I win the last tournament and now can’t access anything. 12 days ago a…" - Robbie Castleman itunes
9
"every"
9 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "See update below Disputes never in your favor - WORST customer service. Why did the coins for winning the tournament drop drastically? I won 97 coins for first place and today 65 for first place This app expects you to screen shot every move you make in order to prove you completed an offer or have an in game…" - NATEHRH
10
"daily"
9 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "I quit after years. I have played this daily for almost a decade. But since they started interrupting your game every minute or so with ads, I quit as of today. It is intrusive and a push for you to pay them money for ‘no ads’. I totally get and understand tha…" - Polly ester
11
"lost"
8 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Big Glitch still not fixed.. Been trying for several hours to play the daily crossword, but the game won’t load. Yes, I turned my phone off and on. Yes, I’ve waited and tried again. I am pretty sure I win the last tournament and now can’t access anything. 12 days ago a…" - Robbie Castleman itunes
12
"today"
7 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Today’s update ruined the app. I know it’s all about making money but this latest update has ruined the app. Others might pay the monthly fee to access the three puzzles but there are better free apps out there. Stuck with this app because i played for years." - NiceManMD
📋 All 50 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Today’s update ruined the app
I know it’s all about making money but this latest update has ruined the app. Others might pay the monthly fee to access the three puzzles but there are better free apps out there. Stuck with this app because i played for years.
Completed packs download fails! Going on for 1 Year!
Completed puzzles packs downloads fail, so we are unable to collect tokens, badges. I have been reporting this issue for close to 1 year. All I ever get is canned replies! It’s like you guys really don’t care about the users experience and also don’t care about the reputation of your company. Tell me, does it really take over a year to fix an issue? Is there anyone that cares enough
to fix the problem? Apparently not!
to fix the problem? Apparently not!
See update below Disputes never in your favor - WORST customer service
Why did the coins for winning the tournament drop drastically? I won 97 coins for first place and today 65 for first place
This app expects you to screen shot every move you make in order to prove you completed an offer or have an in game issue What's the incentive to complete mini and midi games once you've completed 50? None - they don't add any points to the tournament. How about adding more goals to reach with them.
Additionally, having a player earn over 800 points in a tournament in about an hour is ridiculous! I get that you're in the business to make money but let's keep the tournament fair. It's impossible to finish a game in 1 second without buying every single word. Take their money but these players should be banned from the tournament.
Suggestion: put a minimum time into the game for finishing one. It's physically impossible to answer the clues for an entire game without cheating aka buying every clue, in one second. Put at least 2 minutes as the minimum time. Sick of losing against cheaters who complete their puzzles in zero seconds!!
Lastly it used to be 300 coins if you finished first Now it is some random amount🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️ And of course no answer from developers
This app expects you to screen shot every move you make in order to prove you completed an offer or have an in game issue What's the incentive to complete mini and midi games once you've completed 50? None - they don't add any points to the tournament. How about adding more goals to reach with them.
Additionally, having a player earn over 800 points in a tournament in about an hour is ridiculous! I get that you're in the business to make money but let's keep the tournament fair. It's impossible to finish a game in 1 second without buying every single word. Take their money but these players should be banned from the tournament.
Suggestion: put a minimum time into the game for finishing one. It's physically impossible to answer the clues for an entire game without cheating aka buying every clue, in one second. Put at least 2 minutes as the minimum time. Sick of losing against cheaters who complete their puzzles in zero seconds!!
Lastly it used to be 300 coins if you finished first Now it is some random amount🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️ And of course no answer from developers
Crashing app
The game freezes up every time I use it. I am unable to use puzzle packs and have requested a fix. Nothing has changed!
Frequently freezes
App freezes frequently. It looks like this has been an ongoing issue. Developers are ignoring users feedback and complaints.
Word game
Why will it not download when everything else will? Only game that I have trouble downloading loading.my suster’s wont load tonight
Game not downloading
Having issues with game not downloading.
Streak lost due to app failure to load
App finally loads shortly after I’ve downloaded competing apps. Or is it the day has ended? Either way
Fun
Please go back to free mini and midi puzzle OR have them available after watching videos I’ve been playing this app since it came on out and hate that you charge for this Used to win 300 coins for first place Now it’s some random number Will never spend a dime on this game!!
Tokens for WHAT?!
What is with the focus on winning tokens that have nothing to do with the game? Who cares what the picture is? I’d rather win coins to buy more puzzles. Looking for a replacement.
What’s going on??
Every month or so my daily crossword game has a different name on my heading which isn’t my name or the number of days that I have been playing. why is this happening at least once a month?? Is there some kind of problem with the stability of this daily game? So frustrating…
Decade Lost
I purchased every themed puzzle and now there’s a few hundred puzzles back to being unpurchased. Years of completed puzzles are now incomplete. Tech support keeps telling me they understand how I feel with no solution. If I see no resolve I quit this app forever. This is real bad that sporadic data can be wiped so easily.
They tell you to wait patiently and that a team is working on it. Then they close the ticket on you.
By far the worst tech support ever. Lazy and hoping people give up.
They tell you to wait patiently and that a team is working on it. Then they close the ticket on you.
By far the worst tech support ever. Lazy and hoping people give up.
App is still a joke
Todays Sunday funday puzzle won’t open have tried all morning ! Could never open that puzzle on Sunday! Now today the app won’t open keeps getting an err ! Fix this app with all the problems I still enjoy doing the puzzles
Too many ads
Ads too long interrupt play stopped using
Prefer old model.
Don’t care for the auto fill. Clues are for first timers. Weak. Go back to what we had.
WORST part is you’ve undone ALL the games I’ve done over the years. Gone forever.
WORST part is you’ve undone ALL the games I’ve done over the years. Gone forever.
Your site goes down and there goes my 260+ day streak!
What a cruddy deal that when your site goes your players get screwed and LOOSE our progress-not cool.
Puzzles won’t load
The main puzzles won’t load no matter what I do I deleted the app and redownloaded and they still won’t load. I missed 2 puzzles in a row because they won’t download.
24 hour shut down
In 1-1/2 hours, the app will have been unavailable for 24 hours for getting the daily puzzle. Too bad they don’t have someone to get this fixed in that long period of time.
Unable to play daily puzzle
Puzzle logo keeps spinning with “Downloading puzzle” message and just hangs. I waited almost 5 minutes with no change. I’m furious as I’ve been playing over 1000 consecutive days and that will sadly end unless this is fixed in the next 2 hours.
Sunday Funday will not load
The Sunday October 19, 2025 puzzle will not load. It just spins around saying “loading.” Here’s hoping that since all of the other puzzles work that the 420 day streak does not disappear.
Problems
Once again daily puzzle will not load
App has a bug
Unable to open daily puzzle it won’t download I get error message with a frown face and it says down load after sometime. I can go to puzzles that haven’t been worked in the archives and they instantly download.
Not +4 and up
This game should not be 4+ if there’s a private chat room that can’t be restricted or monitored.
Politically Motivated, Unable to Stop Location Tracking
Most of the Crossword questions and answers are Liberal on a political bias. They are a lot pertaining to rap music artists whose music promotes vulgar language, drugs, sex, and violence. Then there are some pertaining to religion, a lot of which is Muslim. Any directly political are always Democrat, mostly for Obama and the current Squad-like bunch. I began playing to escape realities of the madness in the world, only to find it in a video game. I question why a video game is attempting to sway political affiliation. I’m personally sick of everything being political. Businesses should stay out of politics. I’m so sick of it. We are doomed as a society so why should we constantly be reminded of that when trying to play a game? Both parties lie and manipulate to the point we can’t believe or trust anyone or anything, including restaurants, stores, news media, and now video games. But I certainly don’t care to play a word game referencing people who have ruined society with crime and mental illness, a lot of which is directed toward children and young adults.
I was also not aware that the game tracks your location until I came here to post a review and saw it in the game details. Sickos! You give permission just by playing the game and there’s no way to turn it off…
I was also not aware that the game tracks your location until I came here to post a review and saw it in the game details. Sickos! You give permission just by playing the game and there’s no way to turn it off…
Hollywood
Lost my consecutive days of over 700 days and then the game started flashing and could access for over 10 days.
Buggy game, horrible support
I played this app for almost ten years. It started out good, then around 2021 the game started having all kinds of problems. The game would not count completed puzzles toward weekly challenges (almost weekly). Then, at the end the gifting started bugging, not letting me send gifts back to friends that were sending me gifts.
Support was absolutely the worst!! They had 4 years to fix the weekly challenges problem and as of today (when I deleted this app) it still wasn’t working properly. The gifting problem just started and support would not help resolve anything, all support wants to do is “explain” how gifting works. I know how it works, been playing the game and gifting to friends for years. I decided enough was enough. I deleted the game. If support doesn’t care to fix the problems, I’ll not play this game anymore. Totally fed up with this poor excuse of a gaming app.
Support was absolutely the worst!! They had 4 years to fix the weekly challenges problem and as of today (when I deleted this app) it still wasn’t working properly. The gifting problem just started and support would not help resolve anything, all support wants to do is “explain” how gifting works. I know how it works, been playing the game and gifting to friends for years. I decided enough was enough. I deleted the game. If support doesn’t care to fix the problems, I’ll not play this game anymore. Totally fed up with this poor excuse of a gaming app.
New VIP subscription?
Can we no longer play mini puzzles or use coins for older puzzles without paying $7.99 a month….?
Horrible intro and buggy
Forced intros are never a good idea. And the permissions screens overlapped the puzzle and were underneath the forced info. Will not be playing.
Still lousy after all these years
They stopped the loud ads playing in the game, but it still doesn’t work a lot of the time.
No more
I have been playing this game for years, and liked it a lot. But now, it seems I can’t play, unless I agree to let them give out my info to third party people. Well, I guess it’s time to say goodby.
New update doesn’t work
I’ve played this game everyday for years. Since yesterday’s update the games hardly open. I’ve lost all my accrued coins. All my medals and it’s not recording that I played all three games today. It isn’t working!!
New version a mess
I don’t know what they did but the latest update has lost history and totally locked up the app. It’s obvious no one tested it before they made the update live.
Use it everyday
I play all three puzzles every day but since they added FLO, everything crashed! Cannot do any tournaments, can’t get to the store, can’t see my time, every time I finish a crossword I have to close the app for it to continue to work.
I reported the problem and nothing it’s done to fix this!
Very disappointing
I reported the problem and nothing it’s done to fix this!
Very disappointing
Bad Feedback + Good Feedback
I do not like how you guys time us for the crosswords.
We should be able to take our time.
But other than that I love doing the crosswords!
We should be able to take our time.
But other than that I love doing the crosswords!
I quit after years
I have played this daily for almost a decade. But since they started interrupting your game every minute or so with ads, I quit as of today. It is intrusive and a push for you to pay them money for ‘no ads’. I totally get and understand that watching ads between games is how they make money but to interrupt your game constantly is just unacceptable
Big Glitch still not fixed.
Been trying for several hours to play the daily crossword, but the game won’t load. Yes, I turned my phone off and on. Yes, I’ve waited and tried again. I am pretty sure I win the last tournament and now can’t access anything. 12 days ago a similar thing happened and even though I played the daily game it didn’t count and I lost my 611 day streak. Really need to get this fixed or this loyal player (I really like my “friends” and we gift back and forth all the time) will have to just quit and I hope I don’t have to.
NOW, at least 2 months later….. still not fixed. Game just freezes and have to escape, erase the frame and etc. And, yes, this is the only app on my phone that does this! Been playing for years and I really used to enjoy the crosswords and exchanging gifts with friends. PLEASE FIX THIS ANNOYING GLITCH!!!!
NOW, at least 2 months later….. still not fixed. Game just freezes and have to escape, erase the frame and etc. And, yes, this is the only app on my phone that does this! Been playing for years and I really used to enjoy the crosswords and exchanging gifts with friends. PLEASE FIX THIS ANNOYING GLITCH!!!!
Jan 2026 star update
About a month ago, I had problems where the crosswords would not load and I could not keep my progress going, which was at that time 418 days. Then when I contacted Tech support, I’m not sure what they did, but I was able to get back to the crosswords to play them, but it knocked me out of doing any tournament standings. No matter how many puzzles I have done since then I still cannot join the tournament. And then yesterday, January 23 I got all of my puzzles done by 9:00 PM as I always do and when I went to do Saturday puzzles I’ve lost all my progress 😠 I am now back to my first day of crossword puzzles, even though I have done them 400 something days in a row and always by 9 PM! Quite angry at this time!
Reset Problem
This is the second time that there’s been a problem loading the puzzle. After the problem reset in a few hours, it erases over 80% of the puzzles that are already completed.
Freezes iPhone and iPad
Every time we play now, the app completely locks up and freezes my iPhone and my wife's iPad for a good 5 minutes. Not worth the hassle.
Fun, too many pop ups
Fun, too many gimmicks to try to get you to spend money.
Puzzle packs erase themselves after purchase
Enjoy the crosswords. Play almost everyday. But the packs erase themselves after purchase if you leave the app, which is a major flaw, almost a scam if I thought it was intentional. I have to crunch out and complete all five puzzles before doing literally anything else in my day or risk losing the (REAL) money I spent on the pack, as they can not be repurchased, refunded, or revisited.
If I scroll to track down the pack I had previously purchased it to redownload it simply says “download failure”.
I enjoy the app otherwise, please resolve the issue so I can provide a better rating.
If I scroll to track down the pack I had previously purchased it to redownload it simply says “download failure”.
I enjoy the app otherwise, please resolve the issue so I can provide a better rating.
Daily puzzle quit working
The daily puzzles have quit working. It started with yesterday’s puzzle and has continued with today’s puzzle. You tap on the daily puzzle and just get the little window with Downloading Puzzle, and it just keeps spinning and going nowhere.
Packs are disappearing
Update… now daily puzzles won’t load 😞
Please fix the packs!!! I’ve bought several and then they disappeared!!! And I’ve lost the coins it cost me to buy them!!!
Please fix the packs!!! I’ve bought several and then they disappeared!!! And I’ve lost the coins it cost me to buy them!!!
Not easy to download
I am unable to download the most recent crossword puzzle. I’ve been trying for almost a full day. I updated my iPhone and uninstalled and reinstalled the app. App still stays in continuous “downloading puzzle”. I’ve been doing this app for years and enjoy it, but I’m beginning to think it is time to move on. All good things must end. This is very frustrating.
Not loading properly
Every time there is an ios update
Not all puzzle downloads
Properly and you have to delete app and reload again
Not all puzzle downloads
Properly and you have to delete app and reload again
Words with Friennds
Please put a way to escape that awful dog ad on the Words with Friends app. We have to do a hard reset of our devices to remove the ad and resume playing!
Beware ripoff
This game is fun, great mental exercise, good app except for the fact that if you purchase puzzles or puzzle packs and don’t play them immediately they disappear after it’s taken your coins. Turn on notifications to receive reward? NO REWARD. This app tries to rip you off around every corner
Question
Why aren’t the puzzles working after viewing a video? Have been getting error messages for a couple weeks! Getting frustrating to play
Don’t like the ads
Too many Ads. Not for me.
What’s going on?
Ever since Flo showed up the app has been slow to open and I’m often logged in as some other player.
I understand that Progressive has paid money to advertise as Flo but what’s with all the weirdness in getting the app to load?
I understand that Progressive has paid money to advertise as Flo but what’s with all the weirdness in getting the app to load?
Sentiment summary
87%
Positive (4-5★)
5%
Neutral (3★)
8%
Negative (1-2★)