You may be wondering what the heck “The Septic’s Freebie” or “The Septic’s Companion” apps are. According to the developer Beta Minus, it’s “A humo(u)rous yet strangely useful guide to British slang from the book, The Septic’s Companion. If you can’t tell your brolly from your baps or your pants from your plus-fours, this application will be essential. Browsable by category or letter, searchable, and includes audio clips of each word and even a “guess the definition” game. If you have a data connection, you can even hear audio pronunciations. Ideal for anyone who is relocating to the U.K., or dating a limey, or working with Brits, or watches British television programmes, or once went to a British pub, or has at some point in their life owned any item which came from Britain. Also it makes you popular at parties and may, in certain circumstances, avert fist-fights.”

I can safely say I fall into that category, being from the United States. I am, however, a huge fan of Top Gear, and I’ve noticed they say things that go right over my head quite often. This just might be the guide to help me out!

Full review after the break.

The first thing you’ll notice about this app is how simple and professional it appears to be. It utilizes the Metro interface very effectively. There are four sections to the software — search, viewing alphabetically, viewing categorically, and the “Sort of Game” section. Each section works well, and is useful in its own right.

The humor in this app is nearly endless, at least for someone like me. There must be hundreds, possibly even thousands of words in this “dictionary” of sorts, and most of them are accompanied by hilarious example sentences.

Under search, you can click “I Feel Unlucky”, which brings another funny word to the screen. At any time, you can click on a word and bring it full screen, also giving you the options to play the audio pronunciation of the word (requires data connection) as well as emailing the results to a friend, or an enemy!

The search by alphabet or category sections work very well. There are some funny categories!

The “Sort of Game” is creative, yet simple. Shake the phone to reveal a word. At this point, you could take bets, or create a drinking game out of it. Shake the phone again to reveal the definition.

BOTTOM LINE:

Positives:

• Entertaining, lighthearted, humorous take on British Slang
• Search works quickly, and the “I Feel Unlucky” button is addicting
• Viewing by the letter and by category is well laid out and useful.
• The “Sort Of Game” is a nice little bonus, and works well.
• IT’S FREE!

Negatives:

• It needs a live tile word of the day — Microsoft calls them live tiles for a reason, and developers just aren’t utilizing this feature enough.
• It has just one small bug causing the category list to be unusable — easily fixable once you understand what caused it. (see video)

SCORE: 9/10

Links:

The Septic’s Freebie (Free ad-based version)

The Septic’s Companion ( $1.99 and advertisement free )