How to play

The word pool

The play field is a scatter of complete items — 30, 40 or 50 of them depending on the room settings. Depending on the mode those items are whole words, whole numbers or single letters. They are tilted, spread out and never lined up in a table. There isno letter grid and nothing to trace, not even in Letters mode: you are hunting for one complete item among other complete items.

Both players look at the same pool, generated from the same seed, so neither player gets an easier board.

Your X-grid

Your grid is the only real grid in the game, and it is yours alone. Tap an empty cell once and it becomes an X. That is the whole interaction — no dragging, no double taps, no holding. Tapping a cell that already has an X does nothing.

You can only fill cells during your fill window: the stretch of time between your opponent starting their search and them finding the item. The longer they take, the more of your grid you get to claim.

Fill every cell and you win the round. Both grids are then wiped clean for the next one — the match score is what carries forward.

The 30-second timer

The countdown only ever applies to choosing a word. There is no time limit on searching. If the chooser runs out of time, the game picks a random word from the pool for them and play continues — a match can never get stuck.

Controls and accessibility

• Touch: tap a word to pick it, tap a cell to place an X.
• Mouse: click anywhere you would tap.
• Keyboard: Tab moves between words and grid cells,Enter or Space activates the focused one. Focus is always visible.
• Screen readers: every word and cell has a spoken label, and the current phase is announced as it changes. No state is communicated by colour alone.
• Reduced motion: if your system asks for reduced motion, the celebrations become instant instead of animated. Nothing you need to know is hidden inside an animation.

Room settings

• Game type: Words, Numbers or Letters. The rules never change — only what is scattered across the field.
• Match: 1 Round, Best of 3 or Best of 5. Grids reset between rounds; the match score does not.
• Pool: 30, 40 or 50 items. More items, harder search.
• Grid: 4×4, 4×6 or 4×8 — 16, 24 or 32 cells. Always four columns wide, so a cell stays thumb-sized on any phone.
• Time to choose: 15, 30 or 60 seconds.

Four ways to get an opponent

• Play Online. Tap it and you join a queue. The server pairs you with the next real person who arrives and drops you both into the same room — no code to type, no link to send. Quick Match always uses the house settings: words, a pool of 40, a 4×4 grid, 30 seconds to choose, best of 3. Nobody is simulated, so if it is quiet, you wait.
• Play with a Friend. Create a room and you get a six-character code and a link. Send either one. Your friend opens it, you both tap ready, and the match starts. The person who made the room chooses the settings.
• Two on this device. Both players share one phone or tablet, passing it back and forth as the roles swap. Nothing leaves the browser.
• Play vs Bot. A full match against the computer at easy, normal or hard. It plays through exactly the same rules you do, and it runs entirely on your device — useful for learning the pool, and it works with no connection at all.

When something goes sideways

• The chooser runs out of time. The server picks a word from the pool and the round carries on. A match can never stall because somebody looked away.
• The finder taps the wrong word. Nothing is lost and no time is added, but there is a short lockout before the next tap registers — mashing every word on the board is not a strategy.
• Someone loses their connection. Losing your connection does not lose you the match. The room holds the whole state — seat, grid, score, round, target — and a refresh puts you back exactly where you were.
• Someone does not come back. After 90 seconds away, the match is awarded to the player who stayed. It is recorded as a forfeit rather than as a win.
• A stranger opens your room link. They cannot get in. A room seats exactly two people, and the third is told it is full — the two of you see nothing.