A while back during Surface Pro 3 launch Microsoft showcased a special Crossword App from NYT that perfectly showed why Active Pen is not a pushover on a tablet. Doing Crossword puzzle on a tablet with a pen gives such a natural feel to it. It is like writing on paper. With handwriting recognition, a technology that Microsoft leads its competition decades ahead, the app can easily transcribe your written letters and numbers into digital formats that can be used in the crossword.

Following is the App description in the Store:

The best crossword in the world is better than ever! Enjoy the same puzzles printed in the daily newspaper on the only mobile crossword app built by The New York Times.

The New York Times Crossword is free to download, and all users get unlimited access to the daily puzzle and calendar archive for 7 days. After that, subscribe for full access to The Crossword on Windows 8 and at NYTimes.com.

PLAY ANYWHERE

Your subscription now gives you access to The Crossword on NYTimes.com at no additional charge! Just connect or create an account in your account settings and Play Anywhere. Your Windows puzzle progress will be saved and available on the web and vice versa!

DAILY PUZZLE

It’s the same puzzle that’s printed every day in The New York Times newspaper. All daily puzzles are available the previous day at 10p EST with a subscription, so enjoy Tuesday’s puzzle on Monday at 10p! Practice and learn how to solve the puzzle on Monday or Tuesday or challenge yourself with even harder puzzles later in the week.

PEN

If you have a Surface tablet, you can solve the way crosswords were meant to be solved: write directly on the puzzle as you would in the newspaper!

PAST PUZZLES

Subscribers also enjoy nearly 20 years of classic puzzles from our archives.

MODERN PUZZLE FEATURES

Solve puzzles that include new tricks like rebuses, highlighted or underlined squares, and more!

Feedback? Suggestions? Issues? Please contact us at NYTCrossword@NYTimes.com or from within the app itself. Your feedback is important to us and we’ll do our best to assist you.

Please note: subscription to The New York Times Crossword does not include access to any other New York Times products, including but not limited to NYTimes.com or mobile news content, e-reader editions, Times Premier, NYT Now, or any other apps.

Given the quality of this app, I am actually surprised New York Times is making it free of charge in the Store. This is rather unexpected, except if Microsoft delivered most of the man-hours on the app of course.

If you have a Surface Pro or any Windows device with a Pen, this was made for you. I guess Dell Venue Pro is gonna become a treasure now for Crosswords addicts who own the cheap device. Although if you don’t own a pen, you can still use the app with touch or also on a desktop as usual.

Go download the app now, courtesy of NYT and Microsoft I’m suspecting. Download via the following link:

Credit: Windows Store
http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/nyt-crossword/18fde24c-e748-482a-b2c1-e5a877e017b5