Crossword Chef is a daily, mini crossword app on iOS built by Sid and me. It's still early days, but with solid early traction, we're excited to build the best crossword app on iOS.
Initial Launch
Sid launched the first version of Crossword Chef in 2024. It was designed to let people play crosswords across various themes and topics. In addition, it also helped users create crosswords for others to play.
However, the app struggled with both retention and growth beyond its first few users. Even though users enjoyed the puzzle solving experience, there was no habit anchoring them to come back daily.
Redesigning with simplicity in mind
I joined Sid in mid-2025 to help with the app's usage and distribution challenges. In order to solve for traction and retention, we decided to approach this challenge methodically.
We did a bunch of deep research across various fronts:
- Understanding crossword history, landscape, and online culture
- Converstations with crossword enthusiasts
- Immersing ourselves into crossword communities
- Auditing our own app and identifying bottlenecks
- Deep-dive audits on the top crossword apps on iOS
- Exploring crossword tools and platforms
We decided that the most important thing we could do to improve the app was to make it dead-simple to use, and to cut out all the distractions. This way, we could test one hypothesis at a time, and iterate our way to a product that people would enjoy using daily.
The Redesign
Evolution of the App
Admin Panel
Internally, we shipped some basic tools to simplify the process of creating crossword grids, ensuring the quality of the crosswords published, tracking player solve times, building quick tools for cheating detection, and tracking high-level analytics across both iOS and Reddit apps.
Reflections
As of Jan 2026, the app is growing rapidly and we're continuing to make improvements to the experience. Our longer term goal is to bring the joy of solving crosswords to more people around the world. You can download it for free from the App Store here.