Compounded

About Compounded

Compounded is the work of Marcus Tolan, who first imagined it as a card game and moved it online because judging what counts as a closed compound word was easier to do with a dictionary built in. Every pairing is checked against the Oxford Dictionary of English, the reference used by Channel 4's Countdown. Only closed compounds count: firefighter yes, warm-up, high school, carpet or Blackpool no.

Each day is numbered (3 October 2026 was game 22) and has three boards. A board is a four-by-four grid of words such as WOOD, SITE, MOUTH, LACE, NECK, SHORE and WHITE. Tap two words to join them; a valid pair turns green. The catch is that each board hides extra decoy compounds, so a pair can be a real word and still be the wrong one for the solution. To fix that you tap a matched word to see its partner and un-match it, which costs a life, as does every wrong guess.

You have five lives across the day's game and one hint per game, which highlights any decoys you have already made. The game keeps your statistics and streak on your device. It plays in landscape on phones and needs no account.

It suits players who like Connections and word-chain puzzles but want the satisfaction of building words rather than sorting them.

How to play Compounded

1. Open Compounded and press Play; the first board of sixteen words appears.
2. Tap two words that join into a closed compound word, such as WHITE and WOOD.
3. A valid pair turns green; a wrong pair costs one of your five lives.
4. If a pair turns out to be a decoy, tap it and its partner to un-match them (this also costs a life).
5. Pair every word on all three boards to finish the day's game.

Screenshots

Tips

• Look for words that can only go one way first (NECK pairs far less freely than WORK).
• Be wary of words that fit several partners; those are where the decoys sit.
• Use the one hint once you have a few pairs: it shows which of them are decoys.
• Remember only closed compounds count, so no hyphens or two-word phrases.

Questions