lexagons

About lexagons

In lexagons you never type a word. Each word starts from a few letters, and you choose what comes next from a handful of offered letter groups, repeating until you have made a real word of the target length. Some of the offers are traps: once your letters can no longer lead to any valid word, that word is lost and you start another.

A puzzle has ten words to complete before too many mistakes end it. Every finished word is rated for rarity, with the rarest possible word worth top marks, so the score rewards a wide vocabulary rather than speed. You can look up the words you make, and the game points you toward rarer ones.

The developer, SKYLE, explains in a devlog that everyone in the world plays the same puzzles each day, so scores and words can be compared with friends. Two modes, chilled and regular, are open to everyone in the browser version. The game once had iOS and Android apps that unlocked a harder daily puzzle, extra games, stats and history; those store pages are no longer available, so the web version on itch.io is the way to play now.

It suits players who enjoy rare words and dictionary browsing, and anyone who likes a word puzzle that rewards caution as much as knowledge.

How to play lexagons

1. Open lexagons on itch.io, run the game and choose today's chilled or regular puzzle.
2. Look at the starting letters and the target length for the word.
3. Pick one of the offered letter groups to add to the end of your word.
4. Keep choosing until you have a valid word of the right length, avoiding choices that lead nowhere.
5. Complete all ten words, then compare your rarity score and words with friends.

Screenshots

Tips

• Before each pick, check that at least one real word can still follow from it.
• Rarer words score more, so consider an unusual ending when you are sure it exists.
• Start with chilled mode to learn how trick choices work.
• Use the in-game lookup to learn the rare words you meet.

Questions