I completely agree with Whoever59! For a long time, Red Herring was among my favorite games. Visually appealing and straightforward, the brilliant simplicity and overall concept behind this unique word sorting puzzle challenged my inner wordsmith and encouraged left-brain thinking and creativity. Having completed its generous offering of free (and ad-less) puzzle packs, I continue to play the (also free) Red Herring "Daily Challenge". In recent months, however, I am finding this game to be increasingly frustrating as more and more puzzles involve absurdly esoteric categories and far-fetched and forced connections between words. (As a side note... Due to the nature and structure of this game, I assume it cannot be computer generated; so I wonder if its creators have simply run out of ideas for categories, which would explain the decline in quality. Just a thought...)

Within the first set of free puzzles, there’s a lot of confusing puzzles that just don’t make sense. Like for instance, I’m on a puzzle right now where one of the categories is bovine (cow). For options if answers, there cow, zebu, yak, bison, and ox. But somehow, ox isn’t an answer. Even though an ox is bovine. And in the same puzzle, precipitation is the category with the possible answers of drizzle, sleet, snow, hail, and rain. But somehow, rain isn’t an answer. When rain is literally water falling from cloud, the most well known word relating to precipitation. I’ve noticed a lot of these instances in just the free version, where there are answers that clearly fall under the category, but they’re the red herring words. I also find it very odd that each puzzle onward costs $2. I’ve never seen a game put such a high price point. Usually games will have a free version, and a $5 version. I just don’t see how they’d expect people to pay for +$40 for the full game.

I absolutely love this game. It’s almost impossible to do the hard level alone but I love to sit with my family and try to solve it. It’s great because everyone brings something different to the table and it’s fascinating to see how different everyone’s brain works. We have one person read the words and another looks up words we don’t know. It’s great to play at large family gatherings because all the generations see the puzzle differently. I would love to see a version with simpler words for younger children. I could see this being a great way to get kids into reading more. Learning the definitions to the words is key. Would be great on a road trip with older kids and adults.

I enjoy red herring and feel that it is a great idea for a game. The reason for three stars is the following. I get that game development is expensive, but I am getting both ads and pay in app expenses. If ads are going to be included then they should either disappear when one makes an in app purchase or there should be more puzzles offered for free.One place where the free puzzle platform could be expanded is on the daily puzzles. I note that one gets the last thirty days if one buys a pack of older daily puzzles. But what about allowing us to just have access until the puzzles are posted as older daily puzzles? There are several years that are not listed. You could let us keep the puzzles we’ve completed and as those puzzles become older remove them and place them in packs. As it is, even if you purchase one of the packs, you only get the last thirty days. It would be fun to have the last 6 months up until they get “packed”.Another problem is that sometimes the developers have incorrect information. For instance: Twice now they have had the category “Big Cats” and have included cats that are wild cats but are not big cats (no, ocelots are not big cats). This is just an example, but maybe you need a consultant in the life sciences?I know the second point may seem to be quibbling, but it is only one example. There have been several gaffs of this sort.