Whirly Word

Price at time of writing £1.19 (approx $2)

Whirly word is not the best word game ever, nor is it the most graphically impressive. It also has the most irritating repetitive music that will drive you nuts in due course (turn it off in options before you go mad).

So how the heck does it make the Best Apps grade?

Because it is my low battery lifesaver app. If I am dow to 20% battery and I am still hours away from a charge I resort to this because it is so undemanding by way of resources.

If you turn that music off the battery will last even longer.

Whirly Word is a simple find-the-words game. You have a circle of 6 letters and all you need to do is find all words that can be made from them. A simple target bar shows you how much progress you need to make on each level to go to the next one. It's called whirly word because you have a 'whirl' button to shuffle the letters if you wish (it may or may not help you).

To add to your low battery enjoyment each game will last a long time as you have as long as you like to perform each level. I prefer to make the game more of a challenge by trying to get all words on each level rather than progressing after immediately after the target score is hit.

There is one further minor irritation I have with this game and that is the fact you have to hit the centre-of-circle enter button after each word. So many word games these days allow you to double-click the final letter to make the entry that I would like this option.

Display colours can be changed in options and there is a good local high scores record.

But there is no on-line connectivety and as a result no global high scores.

So Whirly Word is not the best word game in the world but equally it isn't the worst either. It will certainly leave you with something of a brain testing challenge when your gadget's battery edges towards depletion and that's exactly why it remains installed on mine!

8/10 A battery lifesaver from