FIFER

FIFER is one of the small daily puzzles on Take5Games, a free site run by J Krishnamurthi with word, chess, geography and pattern games meant for a coffee break. The board is a 5x5 grid of 25 letter tiles. Hidden among them are five five-letter words, and the whole job is to find them so that every tile ends up used.

Each date has its own numbered grid, the same for every player. The page builds it from the date itself, so there is nothing to download and no account to make. Since October 2026 the five answer words come from a list of familiar everyday words, while any valid five-letter word is accepted as a guess.

Play is a matter of tapping tiles in the order of a word. The letters can sit anywhere on the board, so there is no path to trace. When the five tiles spell a real word, the word locks in, its tiles take on a colour and slide down out of the way, and the next word gets a new colour. A wrong start can be undone a letter at a time, and a locked word can be sent back to the grid with the cross on its chip. That matters, because a word that is valid may still leave letters you cannot use.

A timer runs from the first tap. Finishing within 100 seconds earns gold, up to 150 seconds silver, and anything slower bronze. The page keeps medals, a streak of days won and a score spread on your device, and a share button copies your result. A short demo walks through the taps before you start. If you want more after the daily, a free play mode deals fresh grids that never touch the streak.

It suits players who like anagrams and quick timed rounds more than long guessing games. Most days take two or three minutes.