Play on Words
Matt McQueen · 5 min read
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First it was books and music, then card games. Now it's word games, and there are twelve of them.
For a blog called Matt Rarely Writes, I've been spending a lot of time with words lately. Just not my own.
The new site is called Word Games, and it's a set of original daily word puzzles. There's a new puzzle for each game every day at midnight, your time, and everyone gets the same ones. Each takes a few minutes, which makes them ideal for a coffee break, or for putting off something you should really be doing instead.
The games
Each game has its own "How to play" page, with an example, if you'd like the rules first. They fall roughly into three types.
Find the best word
Price Tag - every letter has a price, from 1p to 9p, and you have a budget. Find the longest word you can afford.
Threader - you're given three or four letters, in order. Find the shortest word that contains them, in that order.
Lockout - eight letters are locked out and one is a must. Find the longest word that plays by the rules.
Clean Sweep - fifteen jumbled letters. Use every one of them, in as few words as you can.
Matryoshka - start from two or three letters and grow them into a chain of words, one letter at a time, like a set of Russian dolls. AT, CAT, CHAT, CHATS, CHANTS.
Swap Shop - two letters swap places for the day. Find the words that are still words after the swap, like BAT and BET.
Every game shows you the target up front, so you know how close you are. Most of them let you keep going until you find the best answer, or give up and press Finish. And if you're stuck, every game has a hint, although you won't get a perfect score if you use one.
Join the words
Hinge - five pairs of words, each missing the word that joins them. BLUE … CAGE is BIRD, for BLUEBIRD and BIRDCAGE. Some are sneakier: CAR … ROL is PET.
Halves - twelve halves of words, all mixed up. Join them in pairs to make six words. Watch out for decoys, because a perfect day has no mistakes.
For book lovers
Lost for Words - a line from a classic novel, with one word missing. Every wrong guess gives you another letter.
Cipher - a line from a classic novel in code, with every letter swapped for another. Crack the code to read it.
Shelf Scramble - the title of a well-known book, with the letters of each word jumbled. Put it back together.
Retitled - the title of a famous book, reworded. Huge Hopes is Great Expectations, and Small Village is Hamlet. What's today's really called?
The lines in Lost for Words and Cipher come from 28 classic novels, from Jane Austen to H. G. Wells, all out of copyright and taken from Project Gutenberg. Once you've finished, you'll see which book it was.
Same puzzles for everyone
Because everyone gets the same puzzles, you can compare notes with friends. When you finish, you'll see the answers and your stats, with a button to share your result without giving the answer away. The home page can share all of today's scores in one go, too. And if you get a perfect score, you'll even get a little shower of letter tiles.
If you miss a day, the archive has every puzzle back to number 1, on 1 October. Each game keeps a streak, and so does the site as a whole, although only puzzles finished on the day count. Playing the archive is allowed. Cheating your streak isn't.
To play, just start typing, or use the on-screen keyboard. On a phone, the word box and keyboard sit at the bottom of the screen, so you never have to scroll to type. There's also a light and dark mode switch, and this time it remembers your choice.
One word list
Every game uses the same list of British English words, without proper nouns, abbreviations or offensive words. The rule is simple: if it's not in the list, it's not a word. If you're sure a word should count and it doesn't, the list has the final say. Feel free to argue with it. It won't listen.
It works the other way, too. The list has plenty of words you've probably never heard of, but in the games where you're after the best answer, the best one can always be made from everyday words, so you won't need an obscure word for a perfect day. In Swap Shop, the rarer pairs are just bonuses. A rarer word still counts, though, if you happen to know it.
About those Amazon links
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. That's the official wording, and I have to include it.
After a Lost for Words, Cipher, Shelf Scramble or Retitled puzzle, there's a link to find the book on Amazon UK. Those are affiliate links, so if you buy something after following one, Amazon pays me a small commission. You don't pay a penny more, and Amazon doesn't tell me who you are. It's an ordinary link, too, so nothing is loaded from Amazon unless you follow it.
Like Brand New, whatever it earns helps to keep this blog free of adverts. And if you'd rather not buy anything, the novels in Lost for Words and Cipher are all free to read on Project Gutenberg.
No adverts, no cookies
Like the card games, Word Games has no adverts, no cookies and no sign-up. Your progress, stats and streaks are kept in your own browser, and never leave your device. Visits are counted with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which doesn't use cookies either. It tells me which pages are opened, but not who opened them.
If you enjoy the games, there's a "Support me" button in the corner, or you can find me on Ko-fi at ko-fi.com/mattrarelywrites. Nothing is loaded from Ko-fi until you press the button. I still can't promise the money will be spent on coffee.
Word Games is on the Sites page here on the blog too, alongside Brand New and the card games. The list keeps getting longer.
Open source
Like the card games, Word Games is open source, under the MIT licence, and the code is on GitHub at github.com/MattMcQueen/word-games. It's written in plain TypeScript, with no framework. The puzzles are made in advance, about three years ahead, and if it ever runs past that, your browser makes the same puzzle itself. Suggestions and bug reports are welcome there.
Over to you
Give them a go, and let me know how you get on. Which one's your favourite? Is there a word game you'd like to see next?
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Cover photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.
