Typeshift

About Typeshift

Typeshift is an anagram game by Zach Gage, first released as a standalone app in 2017 and now one of the free daily puzzles on Puzzmo, the puzzle site Gage started with Orta Therox and which Hearst later acquired. Gage has described it as his take on the anagram and the crossword, in the same way SpellTower reworks the word search.

A Typeshift board is a handful of words that have been stacked and scrambled into columns of letters. Each column slides up and down on its own, like the rings of a combination lock, and the row across the middle is where you spell. Whenever the middle row reads as a real word, its letters turn green. The day's puzzle is solved when every letter on the board has been used in at least one word, so the challenge is less about finding words than about finding the few that catch the awkward leftover letters.

Every player on Puzzmo gets the same board each day, and your time and the words you used show up in your Puzzmo results alongside the site's other daily games. Some boards hide key words that finish the puzzle in very few moves. Typeshift suits players who like Spelling Bee or Letter Boxed and want a shorter, more tactile word puzzle.

How to play Typeshift

1. Open Puzzmo's Today page and choose Typeshift.
2. Drag a column of letters up or down to change which letter sits in the middle row.
3. Line up the columns so the middle row spells a word; its letters turn green.
4. Keep spelling new words until every letter on the board has been used at least once.

Tips

• Start with the letters that look hardest to place, such as a lone Q or a column of vowels, and build words around them.
• Long words clear many columns at once, so look for one that uses a letter from every column.
• The letters are visible on Puzzmo's Today page before you start the timer, so you can plan a few words in advance.

Questions