I discovered a wonderful little app via Hacker News a couple of days ago and have been waiting for the right moment to share it with you guys.

It’s called Crosstips, “here to help you solve your crossword puzzles” and that it does definitely do. What it also does is help you cheat at Scrabble, although of course I wouldn’t recommend it because frankly – lets face it – your teachers and parents were

picture-10right..you’re just cheating yourself and there’s zero satisfaction in it.

Anyhow, so how does Crosstips work?

So say you’re looking for a word, ideally with 8 letters (not that in matters in Scrabble but you’ll get more points!) and that word must have K as the 5th letter and N as the 8th.

Simply type in the number of letters of the word, in this case 8. Fill in the appropriate spaces and press search. Voila, you are presented with a grand list of words which have those two letters in those specific spaces.

Oh and like most things it works on the iPhone.

**Update**

Matt Galloway on twitter also informed of an iPhone app called CheckWord (iTunes link) developed by Cowboy Programming which performs a very similar thing. It not only verifies if a word someone is trying to use in Scrabble is acceptable but it will allow you to enter a few letters of a word you are trying to make and give you a list of options! Sure it’s only available to iPhone users but useful nevertheless.

**Update 2**

A handy commenter has also supplied another fantastic online tool which performs a very similar function. Simply enter the letters you have with “?” question marks for any letters which are unknown and the Chambers Word Wizard will provide you with a list of potential game killers.

I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be seeing a list of alternative apps appearing in the comments so make sure you have a read below for any other options.