Back when I was in the dating pool — the late Pleistocene, oh ho ho — I would sometimes tell women that my only qualification for a life partner was somebody I could “play boggle in bed” with. This was, of course, a euphemism for playing Bill Cooke and Allan Turoff’s 1972 word-making board game Boggle. While atop a bed. Because beds are cozy. And let me tell you, that joke goes so much harder among people who don’t play so many board games that they immediately assume that’s what I meant by “Boggle” in the first place.

Amabel Holland’s cross4 falls into the category of retro word games. Like Boggle, I suppose. Frankly, I would rather play Boggle. Which perhaps isn’t a ding against cross4 so much as it is a statement about how great Boggle is.

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