Word games without ads

What “no ads” can actually mean

The phrase covers several different deals, and they feel very different to play. Here is the spread, from the best case down.

What the listing says	What you may actually get	How to spot it
No ads	Nothing interrupts you	No “Contains ads” label, no in-app purchases listed
Ad-free upgrade	Ads until you pay once to remove them	“In-app purchases” on the store page, and reviews that mention a “remove ads” price
Ad-free subscription	Ads until you subscribe, then a monthly or yearly fee	Same label, plus a subscription screen on first launch
Free with rewarded ads	No banners, but a video ad for a hint, a retry or a bonus	Reviews mentioning “watch an ad to continue”

None of these is a trick. The trouble is when the store listing leads with “no ads” and the fine print is in the last row. Check the labels before you decide.

Check any word game in two minutes

1. Open the store page, not the website. On Google Play, look under the app name for “Contains ads” and “In-app purchases”. On the App Store, look next to the Get button for “Offers In-App Purchases”.
2. Open App Privacy (App Store) or Data safety (Google Play). An app that shares data with advertising companies usually has to say so there. A game with no ads should have little to list.
3. Read the one-star and two-star reviews, and search them for “ads”. Developers cannot edit what players complain about.
4. Open the app and look for the first paywall. If a game asks you to buy or watch something before the first puzzle, you have your answer.

Also see what a hint costs. A game that is ad-free until you get stuck, and then asks you to watch a video, is not ad-free in the moments that matter.

What Knack does

Knack has no ads, no sign-up and nothing to buy in its current release. In the story levels a miss is never a loss: you try again with a fresh puzzle, and after your second miss a free hint is offered. The small clock in a level counts toward a third star and never ends the game.

It is also a smaller thing than a word-game library, and worth saying so. Letter Wheel is the only word puzzle in it. The rest is Number Series, Crowns and, from the second world, Balance, joined together by a story about a small robot called Pip following a friend along a night train. If you want a thousand crosswords or an endless word search, apps built for exactly that will give you more, and some of them are ad-free too. Use the checks above on them.

If you want one word game with a story around it and nothing in your way, Letter Wheel is a good place to start.

How Letter Wheel works

You get a wheel of letters. Slide through them to spell words, and each word fills a place in a crossword grid. Along the way you will also spot bonus words that are not in the grid. The wheel starts with three letters and grows to seven, so the early puzzles are short and the later ones take real searching.