Wordfall: spell your way out from under the stack

The basics

Letters drop one at a time into a grid seven columns wide and nine rows tall, and pile up from the bottom. Each game starts with 21 letters already down, three rows' worth, so you can spell straight away. Emptier columns are much more likely to get the next letter, so the pile grows roughly level.

Spell a word and its tiles vanish. Everything above them falls into the gap. The game ends at the moment a new letter is due and every one of the 63 squares is already full.

Tracing a word

• Touching means all eight neighbours. Each letter must touch the one before it: sideways, up, down or diagonally.
• Three to eight letters. Nothing shorter is accepted, and the word list holds nothing longer. No tile can be used twice.
• Drag and let go to submit. A drag that is not a word is simply dropped, with no penalty. You can also tap tiles one by one, then tap the last tile again or press Submit.
• Back up by retracing. Slide back over a tile already in your trace and the word shortens to that point.

The word bar under the board is your best friend. It shows the score once your trace is a word, says "Not a word yet, but something still starts with…" when you are on a live path, and "No word starts with…" when you are not. The list has 34,446 everyday English words, with no names or abbreviations.

How a word is scored

Every tile shows its value in the corner. Tiles worth 4 or more are gold.

Add up the letters, then multiply by a length bonus:

So CAT is 5 × 2 = 10, but CATS is 6 × 4 = 24. ITCHY is 13 × 7 = 91. OVERDONE is 12 × 22 = 264, or 290 at Speed 2.

Goals and speed

Each level sets a score goal. Reach it before the stack fills up and the level is cleared. The goal is 160 on level 1, 230 on level 2, 430 on level 4, 1,200 on level 9 and 4,300 on level 20, then rises by 300 a level after that.

The Speed counter is separate. It rises during a game after a set number of letters have dropped, and each step shortens the gap between drops until it hits a floor.

The stack meter

The thin bar under the goal shows how full the board is. It turns yellow at 40 tiles and pink-red at 52, and stripes appear over the top of the board as a warning. Only a completely full board ends the game. One column touching the top is not fatal, because new letters simply land elsewhere. And when the 63rd tile lands, you still have until the next drop to spell something.

Hints and pause

You get three hints a game (button or H). A hint makes the tiles of a high-scoring word flash yellow and wobble and tells you its length, its points and the row and column where it starts. The finder searches with a time limit, so its word is usually, not always, the best one. If it finds nothing, the hint is not used up.

Pause (button or P) covers the board and stops the letters for as long as you like. Switching tabs pauses the game automatically.

Strategy that works

Go long, but not forever

A word removes as many tiles as it has letters, so long words lower the stack and score more at the same time. We tested this with a computer player at the levels 4–8 pace: always taking the best-scoring word earned between five and ten times the points of always taking the quickest three-letter word, and lasted at least as long. The trap is hunting an eight-letter monster while letters pile in. Aim for five or six letters, and save the quick three-letter clears for when the meter is red.

Grow the word you already have

When the bar says something still starts with your letters, keep going. Endings are cheap length: S, ED, ER, ING. TREAT is 35 points; TREATS is 66.

Spend the gold tiles

Rare letters pay most inside long words: ZEBRAS is 17 × 11 = 187. Even short ones help: JINX is 72, more than double a plain five-letter word like TOAST (35). Q is the exception: the only words with a Q but no U are BURQA and BURQAS, so a Q with no U next to it is dead weight. Clear the tiles under it to drop it into a new neighbourhood.

Keep vowels spread out

Only 63 words in the list have no A, E, I, O or U, and most of those lean on Y. A consonant with no vowel touching it cannot be used. When two words are possible, prefer the one that clears a clump of consonants and leaves the vowels behind to serve their neighbours.

Trim the tall columns

A tall column will not end the game by itself, but the letters at its top touch nothing on the short side, so they are hard to use. A word running down a tall column lowers it and drops fresh letters next to its neighbours.

Bonus cards

After clearing a level you turn over one of three face-down cards. Its reward applies to the next game you start:

• Auto-word: the computer traces and submits 2 or 3 words for you.
• Slow motion: letters fall at half speed for the first 20 seconds.
• Double words: your next 5 words score double, and the extra counts towards the goal.
• Hints: 2 extra hints.

Today's letters

Tick "Today's letters" for the daily game. Everyone gets the same opening board and the same letters in the same order, at the levels 4–8 pace. Where they land depends on your own board, though. There is no goal: play until the stack tops out and chase your best. Bonus cards do not apply, and a streak counts the days in a row you play it to the end.

Keyboard players: arrows move, Enter adds a letter (Enter again on it submits), Backspace steps back, Escape clears.