Letter Drop
Spell fast. The tiles do not wait.
Loading the word list…
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How to play
- Tiles drop into the columns, faster as you go.
- Click tiles — or type — to spell a word of three letters or more, then press Enter.
- A valid word clears its tiles and everything above them falls down.
- Longer words score far more: length is squared, so a six-letter word is worth four times a three.
- The game ends when any column fills to the top.
The one decision
Every turn is the same choice: clear now, or wait for something better. Because score is the square of the length, a six-letter word is worth four three-letter words — so the greedy play is almost always wrong on points.
It is also almost always right on survival. Tiles keep arriving whether or not you have found something clever, and a column that reaches the top ends the run regardless of how good the word you were building would have been. The game is that tension, and nothing else.
Playing it better
- Clear the tall column, not the best word. When one column is close to the top, take whatever word uses tiles from it, even a three.
- Vowels are the bottleneck. A tray of consonants is unplayable no matter how long you stare at it. If vowels are piling up unused, you are being too fussy.
- Learn the short words. The same two- and three-letter words that decide tile games are what buy you time here. Our three-letter list is the single most useful thing to have read before playing.
- Suffixes are free length. Spotting that you can add -ER, -ED or -ING to something you already had turns a 160-point word into a 490-point one.
Common questions
Do the letters have to be next to each other?
No. You can take any tile from any column, in any order. The constraint is the clock and the height of the columns, not adjacency.
How is the score worked out?
The square of the word length, times ten. A three-letter word is 90, a five is 250, a seven is 490. Clearing space matters, but chasing length is what actually builds a score.
Why was my word rejected?
Either it is under three letters, or it is not in the dictionary this site searches — the same public-domain lexicon behind the Word Finder. Proper nouns and abbreviations are not in it.
Does it get harder?
Yes. The drop interval shortens as your score climbs, so the game is a race between how fast you spot words and how fast the columns fill.
Is my high score saved?
In this browser on this device only. There is no account and no leaderboard.
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