Borrowed Letters

Borrowed Letters is a word puzzle on Bludle, a site of small free browser games. Each day it lays out five cards in a circle. Every card has a short clue, such as "A boundary made of posts" or "Exactly vertical", and a short word, three to five letters long, that is one letter off the answer: FANCE for FENCE, PLOMB for PLUMB.

The twist is where the wrong letters came from. Each card's intruder is the letter its clockwise neighbour is missing, so no word can be fixed on its own. You select one letter on every card, then press a single button and all five selected letters move one card clockwise at the same time. If every choice was right, the ring is repaired in one pass.

You get four passes. A wrong pass leaves some words still broken, and the counters show how many of the five are repaired. Your score starts at 1,000 and falls with each extra pass and each hint; a hint reveals one borrowed letter for 100 points.

The interest lies in checking the ring as a whole. A letter that looks clearly wrong in one word has to be the exact letter the next word needs, so a confident guess on one card can break its neighbour. It suits players who like short clued puzzles with a bit of logic, and a round takes about five to eight minutes.

The game is free in the browser with no account. Your scores, streak and history are kept on your device, and a finished ring can be shared as a result.