A
crossword game that is a
computer game. Part of the
Hoyle Games CD and also playable against
other people on the
internet via
www.won.net.
Doublecross is to crossword games what ghost is to most word games. Any sequence of letters that appears in a valid word is an acceptable play on the board. However, letters on the board become stable when the word(s) they are in are all complete words, and thus can't be destroyed by bombs and the like. Also, the basic part of the scoring is dominated by points for having your letters become stable. It is possible to make other players' letters stable on your turn and they will score for it.
Note: Doublecross has a strange sense of which groups of letters on the board need to be partial words. In order to play a letter on the board, it must be part of a partial word which contains at least one stable letter, so you can't just run off playing fragments willy-nilly. To Doublecross, it is only a group of letters in a row or column that runs from one group of stable letters to another, or to the first open square, which much be a partial word. A single stable letter can have partial words on opposite sides of it, and it's possible for the whole group to not be a valid partial word. However, when this occurs and a letter is added to one side to make a complete word, the letters in that word becomes stable, and some or all of the unstable letters on the other side are destroyed because, now that those letters on the other side are stable, the valid partial word must include all of them, and no such word exists.
Besides the situation described above, there are also bombs of two different types that can destroy unstable letters. There is an option to play without bombs, and some people play this way.
The other important difference between Doublecross and other crossword games like Scrabble is that in Doublecross you aren't restricted to playing a single word. You can play 6 letters in 6 completely separate locations in one turn if you really want to. There is a timer to limit your turn so you can't just think forever on this.
The other important scoring opportunity in Doublecross is a form of bonus squares. These squares all show +5 at the start of the game, but when one is played on, and that score is awarded, all the rest increase in value to +10. When the next is taken the score goes up to +15, and then in larger increments, up to +95 points for the last one. These bonus squares, as a whole, can score as much as all the other scoring in the game combined, but since the other scoring is somewhat naturally spread out among the players, this bonus scoring can dominate. As with bombs, it is possible to play Doublecross without these bonus squares, and it becomes a vastly different game without them.