If you’re looking for the next fun word game that you can play to challenge your intellect and pass the time, then you should really give a new App Store game dubbed Scrambled a try.

Scrambled includes three game modes, all of which allow people of all ages to sit back and relax, all while doing their best to recognize words out of a bunch of scrambled letters; these are better known as anagrams.

Scrambled, which is now available in the App Store for $1.99 was created by iOS developer Kyle Howells; he’s well-known and has been respected in the jailbreak community for years, having brought tweaks like Alympus, Emblem, and SwipeSelection into existence.

The game provides not only a fun platform for passing the time in waiting rooms, before class, or even when you’re at home and you’re bored, but also gives you a way to train your brain’s ability to recognize patterns and solve puzzles.

Three game modes

As we noted briefly in the introduction, Scrambled has three game modes you can play: Timed Run, Free Play, and Speed Run.

We’ll talk about each of those below.

Timed Run

The first game mode is Timed Run. In this mode, you will find yourself in a lightly pressured environment to solve the word puzzle you’re given as quickly as possible.

Before you start, you are able to select the word length, which can be set anywhere between 3 and 10 letters, depending on how much you wish to be challenged, and you can also choose how many anagram puzzles you want to try and solve.

Once you begin, you will try to solve the number of anagrams that you selected as quickly as possible. To make words, you just tap on letters in the order that you want to place them, and they will be added to the board. If a word is successful, it’ll stick; if not, the letters will be re-scrambled and put back in your hand.

Be mindful of the time that is shown at the top center of the app, because this is your running timer.

At the end, your time is recorded so you can try and beat your high score over and over again.

Free Play

In Free Play mode, you can practice and take as long as you need to solve your anagrams.

With this game mode, you are given the ability to choose the word length, once again from 3-10 letters, and the game continues on forever with no limit.

You can use Free Play to train your mind to look for letter patterns and learn words that you’re likely to see again in the future. This kind of pattern problem solving is actually very healthy for your mind, especially if you’re not used to it.

Take note that no timer is displayed while playing in Free Play mode:

After you get a few minutes of practice out of the way, and you feel like your brain has received a workout, you might want to try a more difficult game setting to actually put your mind to the test.

Speed Run

The last game mode is Speed Run, which is essentially the exact opposite of the Timed Run mode.

In Timed Run, you were able to take as long as you needed to in order to solve your anagram, and your time would be recorded, but in Speed Run mode, you are given a time limit and if you fail to finish the game in time… well… you snooze you lose.

With this game setting, you can pick your desired word length for what you’re comfortable attempting to solve, as well as a time duration that you want to try and finish the anagrams in.

Just like before, you’ll tap on letters to add them to the board and complete a full word. Your remaining time is displayed at the top center of the app:

After the time limit is completed, you’ll receive a report that shows how many words you successfully managed to complete in the allotted time limit; obviously, the higher the better.

Conclusion

Scrambled is a fun way to keep your brain working throughout the day, whether you’re a kid, teenager, adult, or elderly fellow.

It’s super easy to play, and when you get stuck, hints are available to help you, but do keep in mind that using hints shows up in your score report and it doesn’t feel as good as when you conquer it yourself!

If you want to download Scrambled, you can head over to the App Store and grab it for $1.99. Howells says that since the game is certainly aimed at younger audiences, it is free of in-app purchases to keep parents far away from that headache.

Will you be trying Scrambled? Share in the comments!