Guess The News for iPhone – Read All The Latest News in a Fun Way

If you’re a news addict, and are looking to read them in a unique way, Guess the News, by Finger Arts, is perfect for you. It brings the iPhone a totally new way to read the news, by letting you have some fun while you’re at it! It’s only 99 cents too, so why not?

Getting started with Guess the News is a cinch. You simply tap which topic you would like the puzzle to be about, and whether you want to play in classic mode (no time limit) or timed mode. Once you’ve selected which one mode you’d like to play, you can also set a difficulty level. The higher the level of difficulty, the more points you receive. The puzzles are based on real news.

This brings us to the point multiplier. On the left side of the screen, you will notice an X with a number next to it. That’s the multiplier. The longer you take to solve the puzzle, the lower it goes. Your goal is to complete the puzzle to score as high as possible.

The actual gameplay itself is very easy to understand. You are given a number of letters in the middle of the screen, as well as a sentence with some missing characters at the top. Your goal is to fit the letters in the middle into the sentence at the top. To help you do this, you are given a small news article below which can give you a hint as to what the sentence at the top is. You need to know how to spell properly, and knowing your vocabulary will be very beneficial to you. To help you do this, you are given the message below which can give you a hint as to what the sentence at the top is.

All of the necessary letters are displayed in front of you like Scrabble pieces, with the word you’re working on highlighted for you. You must tap the letters in correct order to finish each word before you move onto the next, and the vowels are marked to give you an idea of the word’s structure. If you’re stuck and idle for a bit, an arrow will point to the correct letter to help you along. If you just cannot figure out where the letters go, you can click pause and quit the game, which will automatically show you where all the letters go to correctly make the sentence.

All of this may seem extremely confusing and unclear to you. Here’s a quick recap:

You select a topic that you are interested in learning about. You are then allowed to choose which mode you’d like to play the puzzle in, classic or timed, and which difficultly level. Then, you are taken to a new screen. Let’s start at the bottom. The bottom has the news article, in brief. The left side has the point multiplier, and the top has a sentence in which the letters are missing. In the middle of the screen, you are given a bunch of letters that fit into the sentence (that was at the top) to make it relate to the news article that you read at the bottom. You must click on the letters in the middle in the order that they fit into the missing spaces at the top. The quicker you accomplish this, the more points you receive.

For example, (as shown in the screenshot), if I wanted to read about the latest in sports, I would click on the sports topic, and then I would begin the puzzle. The article at the bottom talks about Tiger Wood’s golf tournament. It says “Tiger Woods opened with two birdies, saved his round with two pars and wound up with a 4-under 68 on Friday to build a three-shot lead going into the…”. You’ll notice that the article is about Tiger Woods doing a good job in his tournament, right? Well the sentence at the top, once solved, reads “Tiger in control at Australian Masters.” Notice how this is relevant to the news article at the bottom. Also, notice how the message at the top has some letters missing. It’s your job to find the correct letters that belong there. You can only know the solution after you have read the news article down below.

This application was quite confusing to me as well when I was first testing it, but soon after time you’ll get the hang of it.

If you have trouble understanding the game, there is a built in tutorial which will guide you through the game, showing you how everything works. This is great for news users, like myself. I found it extremely helpful, and I hope the other users of this game found it helpful as well.

What I love about this application is the assortment of headlines it contains. It has everything from technology, to health, to even most popular articles! Also, all of the news articles are supplied from good sources, including CNN and Macworld, so you can be sure you’re not reading bogus information.

The actual user interface of the application is better than average. Not outstanding, but they do look visually appealing. Even the transitions look professional, providing the feel of a newspaper / book.

What I felt was missing was the lack of global high scores, which are currently not in this game, but I have talked to the developer, Finger Arts, and they say Open Feint will be embedded into their next update. I’m definitely looking forward to the update, since I love Open Feint.

You can win trophies for completing a certain succession of headlines, but mostly you go for the high score or race against a clock. Each letter is assigned a point score, and you can lose points for misplacing a letter or gain them for finishing a headline particularly quickly.

While it lacks multiplayer or unlockable content, Guess the News is a perfect brainteaser to pick up and put down when you have a few minutes to kill, and plus, you’re learning! Not a lot of other games can say that. The only con about this great application is the lack of global high scores, which is coming in the next update! I highly recommend this app, you should definitely take a look at it in iTunes to see what it’s all about. If you’re still hesitant about buying the application after reading this review, you can always try out the lite verison, which is free but only has a limited amount of great content.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

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Developer Link: Finger Arts

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Aaron

Aaron is a young Tech Enthusiast, and an avid Apple/Microsoft Fan. He is always up to date about the latest tech, and maintains a successful YouTube channel where he shows his inner geek. Aaron reviews everything tech, from Finder Pillows, to iPhone cases, to even laptop coolers. Follow Aaron on Twitter @TheTechReviewer