Droplet

Droplet drops one letter tile at a time onto a board. Each tile falls from a column you do not choose, though you can steer it as it falls, and the order of exits is fixed by the date, so everyone faces the same run and scores can be compared. You spell words of three to eight letters in straight lines, left to right across a row or top to bottom down a column; no diagonals and no reading backwards.

A word of four letters or more clears itself as soon as it is spelled. A three-letter word lights up and waits for you to tap it, so you can bank it or try to make it longer, since OATS is worth far more than OAT. Tiles score their letter values, with extra points for longer words, bonus squares from double letter to quadruple word, double points for two words in one drop and 50 for a word of seven letters or more. A star tile stands in for any letter, and Hold lets you park a tile for later. If a column reaches the top you lose a life, and three lost lives end the game.

Droplet is one of the daily games on Greatest Games, a site of word and logic puzzles. A new puzzle goes up every day at midnight US Eastern, the same for everyone, and it plays free in the browser with no account or download. A free account opens the Droplet archive of every past puzzle by date.