Pair Down

About Pair Down

Pair Down comes from Jeff Chen, a prolific New York Times crossword constructor, and Jim Horne, who for years ran the XWord Info crossword site. It is free, with a new numbered puzzle each day and an archive of past ones.

The idea is subtraction. Each row is a word, such as GYRATE, with a letter tucked inside it that does not belong; take that letter out and another word is left, GRATE. In Level One you remove one letter per row, and the letters you removed, read from top to bottom, spell a secret word (in the game's example, YES). That word is the hint for Level Two.

Level Two removes two letters in a row from each word: SPYWARE becomes SPARE once YW comes out. Now the first removed letters spell one word and the second letters another, together making the day's secret phrase, such as YOU WIN.

Every day there is an Easy and a Hard game. In Hard, some letters are fuzzed out and only come into focus when you click them, and using fewer clicks earns more stars. It suits crossword solvers and anyone who likes a puzzle with a reveal at the end.

How to play Pair Down

1. In Level One, click one letter in each row so that the letters left still spell a real word.
2. Read the letters you removed from top to bottom: they spell the secret word, a hint for Level Two.
3. In Level Two, remove two consecutive letters from each row, again leaving real words.
4. Read the first removed letters and then the second removed letters to find the day's two-word phrase.
5. Try the Hard mode, where some letters are blurred until clicked, and earn stars by using fewer clicks.

Tips

• Look for rows where an obvious shorter word sits inside the longer one.
• Once you have a few removed letters, guess the secret word and work backwards.
• In Hard mode, think before clicking: every reveal costs you a share of your stars.

Questions