How to play Elided
New here? Take the interactive tutorial
Three rounds of sixteen letters. Each hides one word longer than every other word you could spell there, and you have four guesses to find it. Tap letters left to right — they do not have to touch — and guess a word. If it is the longest word, the round is done. If not, the tiles you used are marked, in the answer or not, and you guess again. Three rounds, three ratings, one average to share.
How to spell a word
A word counts if its letters appear in the round in order. Not necessarily next to each other — just in order. You may skip over as many letters as you like on the way, and the letters you skip are simply left behind.
Here is one round, read three ways. The rows are only how the letters are laid out — reading order runs straight on from the end of the first row into the start of the second, so a word may cross the break.
A letter you take is outlined in blue and numbered — in the corner of the tile on the board, and beneath the strip in the figures here — so your word reads back in the order you tapped it. Every letter you pass over sinks, before your first pick as well as between your picks: its face goes flat and darker than the page. Anything after your last pick is untouched, because you could still carry the word on into it.
Guess, and read the marks
Every round hides one word that is longer than any other word the dictionary can find on the board. It is at least seven letters long, it is a common word, and there is exactly one way to spell it. You are never told how long it is.
Any word of four letters or more that the dictionary accepts is a guess. If it is the longest word, the round is done. If it is anything else, every tile you used is marked: a tick on a tile that belongs to the longest word, a cross on one that does not. The marks are about tiles, not letters — a cross on one E says nothing about another E — and a tile you have not used tells you nothing either way. The marks stay on the board from one guess to the next, so each guess narrows the answer down.
You have four guesses. A word the dictionary refuses, or a word you have already guessed this round, costs nothing: the letters shake loose and nothing is spent or revealed, however often it happens. Miss with all four, and the round ends with the answer shown.
Fewer guesses, more stars
Find the longest word on your first guess and the round earns three stars. On your second, two. On your third or fourth, one. A round you do not solve earns none. The day's rating is the average of the three rounds, so a perfect day is 3.0.
The daily puzzle
Everyone gets the same three rounds each day, built from that date's fixed seed — the same on every phone in the world. You get one ranked attempt per date, ever. It begins with your first submission — a refused word included — saves as you go, so a closed tab costs you nothing and a reload brings back your marks and your guesses, and seals when the third round is done. Reloading the page will not give you another guess. That is the point: a rating means something because you only get one.
When the day is sealed, the answers appear: for every round, the longest word, the words you guessed on the way to it, how many common words the round held, and how many rarer words the dictionary would also have accepted. Past days remain playable from the archive, each under the same one-attempt rule, and they offer hints: taking one starts the attempt, just as a submission does.
Practice
Practice builds three new rounds whenever you want them, under the same rules — four guesses, no length given — plus a hint when you want one. It keeps a best average and nothing else — it cannot touch your daily. Your first practice is a short tutorial that plays a round with you.
Stuck? Take a hint
In a practice game and on past days — never on today's puzzle — the Hint button under the board opens Hint and Reveal.
Hint lights a shorter word on the board, always a common word and never a name, one that shows you tiles no guess or hint has told you about yet. It costs nothing, and it is not played for you: guess it or ignore it. You get one hint to start each round and one more after each word you guess. A round you took a hint on wears a 💡 in your results and in a past day's share.
Reveal, once you confirm it, ends the round with no stars and shows the longest word.
What the dictionary accepts
The dictionary is the game's own word list, and it is built to take the words you know: everyday words and a great many rarer ones, from four letters up to sixteen, the length of a round. American and British spellings both count — COLOR and COLOUR, PRIORITIZE and PRIORITISE — and so do everyday contractions, typed without the apostrophe, since no tile has one: DONT, ISNT.
Names, brands and abbreviations are not in it, except where the same letters are an ordinary word too, like ROSE or LASER, and slurs are refused. The rarer words are there for your guesses only: the longest word is always a common word, and so is any word a hint lights.
No word list is complete. A word the dictionary refuses still costs nothing, but if it refuses one it should know, tell us: choose A puzzle or a word on the contact form.
The word list is built from ENABLE, SCOWL by Kevin Atkinson, 12dicts by Alan Beale, the Wordnik word list and Open English WordNet; word frequencies from wordfreq, by Robyn Speer, decide which of its words are common. Read their licences and notices.
Sharing
The share is deliberately spoiler-free. It shows your average and one row of stars per round, in order, with a 💡 on any round you took a hint on — and never a word, a length, a mark, a guess, or which round hid what. Anyone who has not played yet can read it without having the puzzle ruined.
If you play other word games
Word games usually ask for one of two things: a path through adjacent tiles, as in Boggle or Squaredle, or an anagram of a letter set, as in Spelling Bee. Elided asks for a third thing, an ordered subsequence — letters in order, with anything you like skipped between them. Where that sits among the rest is in the directory of daily word games by mechanic, which lists the seven mechanics side by side.