BrainTeaser
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TUAW's Daily App: Look Again!
Many games on the App Store seem to emphasize gaming expertise more than anything else. Either you need to know the genre of the game you're playing, or your fingers just need to be fast enough to win. Look Again! is an interesting contrast to either of those scenarios because it challenges your brain's pattern recognition skills more than anything else. You're given a graphic consisting of two design elements, and it's up to you to figure out which two elements make up the graphic. Like all good puzzlers, things start simple but get increasingly more complicated, even as your brain trains itself to better recognize what's going on. The presentation's not incredible (the colors are a little weird), but it serves its purpose. There are over 250 levels, full Game Center integration, and the app was recently updated to work on both the iPhone and the iPad. Look Again! is currently available for US$1.99 on the App Store. If you want an iPhone game that runs at a different speed, check it out.
TUAW's Daily App: John Enock's Quaso
We've been spotlighting a lot of quick and easy action games in our Daily App feature lately, so here's something a little more cerebral. Quaso is a new kind of Crossword-style puzzle game, except that instead of guessing words, you're trying to figure out numbers in math equations. The game was created by an English mathematics teacher named John Enock, and has been brought to the iPhone by a developer as John Enock's Quaso, now available on the App Store for free. Here's how it works. For every crossword line on the board, you're given a set of math equations with the numbers missing. There's one total number for every puzzle (say, 6), and then for each equation, you need to figure out how another set of numbers fits in to complete the clue and make the equation equal to the total number. In other words, given the clue (*+*) x (*-*), and the answer of 6, you'd eventually work out that the numbers should be (1+2) x (5-3), and then put 1, 2, 5, and 3 in each spot on the answer. But that answer line has to match up to any that it intersects with, so you may need to switch the numbers around -- (2+1) instead of (1+2) -- for it all to work. It's fiendishly clever, and it really puts your brain to work, especially if (like me) you're not that great at casual math. But there are a ton of puzzles to work through, and then you can even buy a puzzle pack via in-app purchase for more. Especially at the current price of free, Quaso is a mathematical brain teaser that you shouldn't miss.
