Cross This App Off Your To-Do List

App makers think of everything. How about an app for folks who are so retro they write to-do lists by hand, yet appear tech-sharp enough to know there darn well ought to be a digital process to address the perplexing problem of how to cross completed items off paper lists?

Once you've done a handwritten list, things do start to get tricky. While Neanderthals invented hand-scrawled to-do lists — in fact cave drawings were the original task management app, and you bet the cavewomen who drew them sure knew how to prioritize — when it comes to crossing things off lists, such as slaughter a bison, buy soy milk, watch Mad Men, charge cell phones ... you need an app for that.

What's a semi-troglodyte list-making maven to do?

Sure there are zillions of list-making apps. I won't list them here, but go check out any "best list-making apps" list.

But if you meticulously compile to-do lists on paper and find crossing off done items is where you draw the line, Retro List is for you.

Retro List is not judging you for having created the problem in the first place. If you feel absolutely compelled to use dye suspended in solvent and fabricated treeware to make lists, you go for it. One you've written your list the old-fashioned way, whip out your iPhone, open Retro List and take a picture of your opus. Click "manage" to view your digitized list. Then swipe your finger on the screen to cross out completed items. Problem solved!

Black line items as you finish them and save or print and email your paper-born list.

For those lawyers whose lists are throwbacks to the age when technology offered no way of replacing ink-made to-do list without using more ink, you're in luck. Retro List hit the app store this month. But there's a catch. The app costs 99 cents. For that price you can always go to Staples.com and buy another pen. Decide what to do and put it on your list.

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New York's Jesse Londin is a lawyer and freelance writer. Email: buzz@londin.com.

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No Cross Words at Talk with Famed Crossword Constructor

Wordplay was the order of the day when Merl Reagle, syndicated crossword puzzle constructor, visited Loyola Marymount University.

To the delight of the crowd of students, faculty and staff in a packed Ahmanson Auditorium, Reagle gave a brief history of crossword puzzles, told stories of his career in puzzle constructing and posed questions for the audience to solve. He is the author of many crossword puzzle books and constructor of the Sunday puzzles that appear in 60 newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, and was the guest of LMU’s Honors Program.

From the first puzzle in 1913 a daily newspaper, crosswords have been an enduring national pastime. The 2006 documentary “Wordplay,” which features Reagle constructing a puzzle, shows how widespread the word game habit is, occupying the time and energies of presidents, athletes and millions of Americans.

Many of the audience could count themselves among those devotees. Reagle would pose a question to the audience, followed by a hush as the crowd thought through it. The silence was often broken by a lone burst of laughter from the first person to solve the puzzle.

Reagle takes a light-hearted approach to his puzzles, on the advice of his first editor. He told how he was admonished after submitting a couple of puzzles with serious themes. “Death, disease, war and taxes are all over the paper,” Reagle was told. “The puzzle needs to be an entertainment.”

Every year Reagle helps run the National Brain Game Challenge, a crossword puzzle contest that raises money for Alzheimer’s disease research. Recent studies have shown that increasing mental activity, such as solving crossword puzzles, can help in slowing the progress of the degenerative disease. Reagle takes quickly to the exercise analogy, calling his puzzles “a Thighmaster for the brain.”

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