After “Wordplay” opened at the Grand in 2006, I subscribed to the New York Times, mostly for the crossword puzzle.

Turns out I’m not very good at them. The puzzles get harder as the week goes on. Mondays are easy, Tuesdays I can ususally do, Wednesdays less frequently, and Thursday and Friday are brutal.

But I got tired of having papers build up, and the subscription was too expensive for just the crosswords (I still ended up reading most of my news online anyway).

Then last week I discovered the NYT Crossword puzzle app for the iPhone. It’s a subscription service–$1.99 gets you the app and a month of playing, after that it’s $1.99/month or cheaper if you buy a year.

But it’s incredibly fun and very addictive. You can see the screen here. Moving around the puzzle is pretty easy with the app, and the timer is a nice feature. Sometimes Mary and I play competively, where we’ll start the same puzzle on our phones.

It’s a really wonderful app and I’m very tempted to keep it around at $1.99/month.