14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft FUSE Labs has quietly introduced a new project, developed primarily by only three members of the team, which worked together throughout their semi-annual creative week.
Team Crossword is now live and available to the public despite being in Beta stage, with the label used for the project being pretty self-explanatory.
What Microsoft FUSE Labs is providing is an online destination designed to allow friends to team up and solve puzzles.
“Head to the TeamCrossword.com homepage, log in with Facebook and chose the puzzle you want to work on. Don't forget to invite friends,” the company notes.
The three Microsoft FUSE Labs team members leveraged a variety of technologies in order to bring their project to life.
According to the Redmond company, Team Crossword has been built leveraging solutions such as: ASP.net MVC 2, jQuery, SQL Azure, Visual Studio 2010.
Obviously, the software giant is also leveraging Windows Azure, its Cloud platform in order to host the project. Microsoft noted that all the credit for the crossword puzzle data needs to go to uClick LLC.
“You can move around the puzzle grid with either the arrow keys or by clicking on the squares in the grid. You can also click on clues in the Across and Down boxes. RETURN will move you to the next clue sequentially based on your current direction, and SPACE will change your current direction,” the company said.
“You can only check your answers once the entire grid is filled out by clicking "Show Wrong". We know "other" online crossword puzzles let you cheat see what's wrong while you're in the middle, but we think you should ask your friends for help instead,” Microsoft added.
But ultimately, Team Crossword is another project leveraging the social networking universe. In this regard, users are encouraged to invite their friends to help out.
“Click the "Invite Friends" button to post a link to your Facebook wall, click the Email link to launch your email client, or else just paste the game URL whereever you want,” Microsoft added.