About this game
Anagrove gives you six letters in a ring and a small crossword above them. Swipe through the letters to make a word, and if it belongs in the crossword it drops into place. There are five words to find.
Here is the part worth knowing before you start: finding those five is not the game. They are all ordinary, everyday words, and they are meant to be easy — everybody finishes them. What the game actually counts is everything else. Every other real word those same six letters make. There are usually about forty of them. Some days there are eighty.
That is the whole idea. Most word games stop when the grid is full and hand you a coin. This one treats the full grid as the starting line. You will find fifteen extra words, decide you have squeezed the letters dry, and then spot three more — and those three are the best part of the day.
How to play
- Make a word. Drag your finger or the mouse through the letters in the ring. Let go and the word is entered. You can also tap letters one at a time and then tap the word itself, or just type it — all three do exactly the same thing.
- Fill the five. A word that belongs in the crossword drops into it. Five words and the set is done. If you get stuck there is a Hint button that shows you a letter. There are three, they are free, and there is nothing to buy — ever.
- Then hunt. Every other real word goes on the shelf below the grid, and the number beside it is your score. Three letters count. So do four, five and six.
- Stop when you want. There is no timer and no end. Press Result for what you found and a copy button that shares it without naming a single word.
Controls
| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| Swipe | drag through the letters to make a word — let go to enter it |
| Tap, tap | tap letters one at a time, then tap the word to enter it |
| A–Z | type the word instead |
| Enter | enter the word you have built |
| Backspace | take back the last letter |
| Esc | clear the word and start again |
| Space | shuffle the letters round the ring |
| Fullscreen | hides the browser so the game has the whole screen. Press it again to bring the browser back |
Tips for finding more words
- Shuffle when you get stuck. This is the best tip there is. Your eye learns the ring in about a minute and then stops seeing anything new. Move the letters and words appear that were sitting there the whole time. Press Space or the Shuffle button as often as you like — it costs nothing.
- Do the short ones first. Three-letter words are worth exactly as much as six-letter ones, and there are far more of them. Go through the letters in pairs and try adding each of the others.
- Take a word you found and change one letter. If rate works, try rats, rant and late. Words come in families, and finding one usually means three more are close by.
- Try the endings. If there is an S in the ring, nearly everything you already found has a longer version. Same with -ED, -ER and -Y.
- Look for the two-letter starts. Run through ch, sh, th, st, tr, gr and pl and see which of them your letters can even make. It is much faster than trying every combination.
- Save the six-letter word. Every board has at least one word that uses all six letters. If you cannot see it, find the smaller words first — the leftovers will usually tell you what it is.
Good to know
- Nothing to buy, nothing to unlock, no coins and no sign-up. No chat, and no way for players to contact each other.
- Everyone in the world gets the same six letters, and they change at midnight UTC. What you have found is kept in this browser and is not sent anywhere, so a different device starts you fresh.
- Any day deals you a board from a day that has already been. Press it again for another. It is there so you never have to wait until tomorrow for something to do.
- The words come from a public-domain English dictionary of about 172,000 words, so some of the extras are genuinely obscure — that is on purpose, and it is why the five in the grid are always ordinary ones.
- It plays with a finger, a mouse or a keyboard, and needs nothing installed.
Stuck on a set of letters somewhere else? The anagram solver will show you every word a set of letters makes. And if you want more like this, try Loomlight, the other daily puzzle here.
