By Joel Abrams
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: [WordHero]
By: SVEN Studios
Price: Free
Platforms: Android
Should you get it?: Yes, if you want to heroically swipe words

As the Schoolhouse Rock song about zero taught me many years ago, there are all kinds of heroes. A word hero is apparently someone who can find words in a four-by-four grid and quickly swipe them. The mind boggles at this definition.

Playing [WordHero], you test the speed of your brain and your fingers against hundreds of people around the world, all looking for as many words as possible in the same arrangement of letters.

The app puts you in a league based on your average score, so beginners don't end up competing against folks with freakishly large vocabularies. The app does validate your words against a dictionary that is quite sizable.

By Swati G. Sharma
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: Matchbook
By: Matchbook Inc.
Price: Free
Platforms: iPhone
Should you get it?: For anyone who likes going out, this is a definite yes

It's Friday night. As usual, I have plans with a group of friends, and again, as usual, no one can decide where to go.

But no worries - it's the Matchbook app to the rescue!

I open the application on my iPhone, and voila! A list of restaurants that I jotted down - either recommended to me by a friend or a spot I walked past at some point - appears on my screen.

The Matchbook app provides a simple service: It keeps track of restaurants, bars, or cafes you wish to explore at a later date.

By Joe Allen-Black
Boston.com Staff

Reviewing: Hello Vino
By: Hello Vino
Available for: iPhone and Android
Price: Free
Should you get it? Yes, if you don't know where to begin in picking out wines.

Pairing food and wine is an art that I wish I were good at on my own. Sure, I can do the basics of making sure to pair my meat with something red, and fruit with whites. But anything more advanced (like exactly WHICH red to pair) is not my specialty.

Now, thanks to the app Hello Vino, it doesn't have to be.

By Michael Warshaw
Globe Staff

Reviewing: TuneIn Radio Pro
By: TuneIn
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and more
Price: 99 cents
Should you get it? If you like radio, then absolutely

There was a time, decades ago, when it was a thrill to stay up late at night with the old family radio, listening to distant voices through crackling static.

If only we had smartphones in those days, and the TuneIn Radio app.

TuneIn is, very simply, an Internet radio app that boasts access to at least 50,000 on-air and Internet radio stations, not to mention program feeds and podcasts. But what makes this app so valuable is how easy it is to find the music, talk show, station, or stream that you want to listen to.