Word deduction
Find a hidden five-letter word from letter clues. Each turn, pick the offered word that fits every clue so far — no guessing, only deduction.
How it plays
A five-letter word is hidden. Each guess marks every letter: ✓ right letter in the right place, ~ in the word but elsewhere, · not in the word. Every guess and its marks stay on screen.
Each turn offers a few words, and at least one fits every clue so far. Find it by checking each word against every clue. Par is what a player who always picks a fitting word needed, plus slack. Levels offer more words, make the wrong ones nearer misses, and offer fewer that fit.
Keys
Space starts and skips ahead · 1–9 pick · Enter submits · Esc stops. On a phone, tap.
What it trains
This practises holding several letter constraints at once and testing words against all of them. It claims nothing beyond this puzzle.
Learn
How to get better at word deduction: the method, the techniques, what each new level asks of you, and the traps the wrong answers are made of.
Your approach to each question
- On the first turn any word fits, so pick the offer with five different, common letters — two or three vowels and no repeats tell you the most.
- After each guess, gather the clues: ✓ letters fixed in their place, ~ letters in the word but not where they stood, · letters not in it (or not again).
- Test each offered word, cheapest check first: does it use a · letter? Out. Does it have every ✓ letter in its place? Does it contain every ~ letter, away from the place it was marked?
- Check against every guess on the board, not only the last one. A word that passes them all fits; pick it.
Techniques and tricks
Grey letters first
Scan every offered word for a letter marked ·. One such letter puts the word out — unless that letter is also marked ✓ or ~ in the same guess, which means only “not again”.
e.g. After GRADE ·~···, any offer with G, A, D or E is out at once; TORCH survives.
Pinned places
A ✓ fixes a letter to a place. Look at just that place in each offer — one glance per word rules many out.
e.g. After TORCH ·✓✓✓✓, the word must read ?ORCH; PORCH fits.
~ means “somewhere else”
A ~ letter is in the word, but not in the place it stood. An offer must contain it, and not in that spot.
e.g. R~ as GRADE’s second letter: TORCH has R third, so it passes; a word with R second would fail.
Read repeats carefully
A letter is marked as many times as the hidden word has it, places first. A · beside a ✓ of the same letter means the word has that letter only once.
e.g. CHEEK against CHEST scores ✓✓✓··: one E, in third place — not “no E”.
When several fit, test new letters
Any fitting word is a sound move. When more than one fits, the one using letters you have not tried yet tends to tell you more with its marks.
e.g. If two offers fit and one repeats letters already marked, prefer the other.
As the levels climb
- You start with three words offered, two of them fitting, so any careful pick works. Then four are offered, three fitting; then the wrong offers become the nearest misses, breaking as few marks as possible; then only two of the offers fit.
- Then five offered; then only one offer fits each turn, so you must find it; then the offers grow by one a level up to the “Most words offered” setting. That is the top.
- From the sixth guess on, the hidden word itself is the only fitting offer, so a careful run always ends.
- There is no clock. Par is what always picking a fitting word took, plus “Extra guesses allowed”; time spent checking is free, a careless pick is not.
Traps to avoid
- The near miss. At higher levels the wrong offers break as few marks as they can — often just one: a ~ letter back in its old place, one · letter, a missing ✓. Check every clue on every word.
- Fitting only the last guess. A word can match the newest marks and break an earlier line. Read the board from guess 1 down.
- A · on a repeated letter read as “no such letter”. If the same letter has a ✓ or ~ elsewhere in that guess, the · only says “not a second one”.
- Forgetting a ~ letter. An offer can keep every ✓ in place and avoid every ·, yet lack a ~ letter. It does not fit.
How to practise
- Lower “Most words offered” to 5 or fewer to keep each board small while you learn; the ladder is shorter, and each board has fewer words to test.
- Set “Extra guesses allowed” to 0 to hold yourself to the careful guesser’s count, or raise it towards 5 while you are learning.
- Before each pick, say the clues as one sentence — “R, not second; no G, A, D or E” — then test the offers against it.
Levels
It is untimed unless you turn the clock on. There are 10 levels with the default settings, and the counter stops at the real top. Your level is judged on your last ten answers, every ten: 90% moves you up, below 80% moves you down, which holds most people near four in five right.
All of it is in the settings beside Start — how many answers a judgement looks at and how often it recalibrates, the thresholds, the time, which questions, how many options, and whether you see each verdict at once or review them together at the judgement. You can also jump to any level.
More words
All games →Word roots
Chronophobia, ichthyologist, frugivore: work out what a word must mean from its Greek and Latin roots — including words nobody has ever used.Anagrams
The letters of a word, scrambled: T L I P U. Put them back — TULIP. Longer words as you climb, and the hint of what kind of thing it is fades away.Coding and decoding
If CAT is coded as DBU, what is EPH? One example shows a code — a shift, a reversal, a mirror, letters as numbers. Find it, then code or decode a word.Groups of four
A board of 12 to 20 words, and exactly four are the same kind of thing. Find them among near misses that come in threes. Connections, one group at a time.Hidden word
A string of letters hides one word — a bird, a tool, a country. Which of the options is in there? The strings grow longer without end.Letters
A handful of letters and four words: exactly one can be spelled from them. Spot it before the clock — the words grow longer.