Aside from donning a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and subscribing to Mensa, reading The Times and doing the crossword is a sure sign of making yourself look intellectual - even if you find it impossible to do and end up sucking the end of your pen whilst trying to nail that Super Fiendish Sudoku.

Though I could never be called the world's greatest crossword player - hell, even getting the accolade of my street's best player would be a challenge! - I wondered whether, after some success on Nintendo's Brain Training games (I reached the best age of twenty on it and I'm twenty-two!), I could further improve my skills with some intellectual crosswords and get some grey cells that even Hercule Poirot would be proud of.

Sadly, that didn't prove to be the case.

CrossworDS (see what they did there, *groan*) is a simple, straightforward crossword puzzle that simply takes the popular paper-based puzzle and transfers it to the palm of your hand. Simple to play, CrossworDS is laid out cleanly and, aside from the fiddly change language setting (which you'll probably never use) is easy to navigate. Don't expect anything but crosswords though - no mini-games, no extra add-ons, no variations like word searches or codewords - just crosswords. Upon starting up the game you can hop into Quick Play, which picks one of the 555 available puzzles at random, pick a puzzle from the selection of easy, medium and difficult, find out how you're doing in the puzzles or have a go with a friend using the basic multiplayer - but you'll probably end up bypassing this and just sharing the one DS between you and whoever is on hand and willing to have their brain picked.

Because of its simplicity and its very nature, CrossworDS is either going to be a game that you'll love or hate. The menus are basic but functional and the number of puzzles should keep even the biggest crossword buff going for ages. On the main puzzle selection menu you can scroll down the list and pick one of them, listed by number in three sections of difficulty. Once selected, the crossword is displayed on the top screen and the series of clues on the bottom screen, along with a handful of other bits and pieces, such as the time taken on the puzzle up to that point and the option of turning off the eventually irritating jingly-jangly music.

Clues are listed in numeric order with the clue, number of letters and letters currently found, listed. To solve a clue you click in the box and either enter the letters by writing them on the touch screen or by typing them in using the onscreen keyboard. The handwriting recognition is pretty good, providing you remember to write in upper case; it struggles at times to distinguish between 'I' and 'L' but it's as functional as the system in such games as Brain Training. If you make a mistake then you can erase your answer or, if you're really stuck, click the light bulb to tell you and when you eventually complete the crossword the final statistics screen displays how many times you used this function, so you can congratulate yourself or hang your head in shame!

All answers are displayed on the top screen and if the answer is correct it will appear highlighted in yellow, which takes away some of the trial and error of crosswords. However, with the difficulty of this game, the feature is a blessing. Though I would like to think I have an above average general knowledge, CrossworDS is too head-bangingly difficult for me. If you're a regular crossword player then perhaps you'll sail throw it but with an easy setting that is basically the same clues as hard but on a smaller board then you can imagine how frustrating it gets and how many times I had to reach for that light bulb. If you get stuck on a puzzle you can come back to it later using the Continue Puzzle option on the main menu. This is a handy feature but you have to follow that one puzzle to completion, as starting another puzzle erases the data on the other - so no chopping and changing with this game.

What is there really to say about CrossworDS? To state the obvious, if you enjoy challenging crosswords then you'll love it. If, like me, you enjoy crosswords that are of medium difficulty - or perhaps lower - then you'll find this a bit of a struggle and are probably better off with a simpler, paper-based crossword or the Sudoku games found on dedicated DS cartridges or the Brain Training games. If you don't like crosswords at all then, obviously, avoid this like a six letter word referring to an epidemic disease. The graphics are basic but well-suited to their purpose (as Tetris DS demonstrated, sometimes fancy graphics can be too much and aren't really needed), the music can become irritating but can be turned off and the lifespan is high, with 555 puzzles to keep crossword fans busy - but only if you have a great general knowledge, especially in the realms of South American and Asian geography and the Olympics, subjects that come up with frightening regularity. If you just want an interesting and slightly challenging way to pass the time then this is a bit too difficult so knock the score down a notch, but if you're a crossword pro then add a point or two - oh, and that six letter word was 'plague' just in case you're reaching for the dictionary…

Reviewed by Philip Lickley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).