How to play

WordSprig is a word game for two. A match lasts nine moves each - and then the score decides.

The aim

Place words on the board and collect more points than your opponent. There is no clock running all evening and no supply that eventually runs out: after nine moves each it is over, and whoever has more points wins.

The board and your letters

• The board is 11 × 11 squares.
• You always hold seven letters on your rack. After every move you draw back up from the bag, as long as it has anything left.
• Every letter has a point value - common ones like E, N or S are worth 1, rare ones like J, Q, X or Y are worth 5. The value sits small in the corner of the tile.

Placing a word

Tap a letter on your rack and then a free square - or simply drag the tile there. A tile you have not confirmed yet goes back to the rack with a tap.

• A word runs across or down, never diagonally and never with gaps.
• The first word of a match must cover the marked centre square. Where in the word that square falls does not matter.
• Every later word must connect to tiles already on the board.
• Everything that comes into being - including words read crossways - has to be a valid word.

Crossings

When your word crosses one already on the board, new words appear where they touch. They all count: a move that incidentally forms three short words scores for all four. That is the heart of the game - a well-placed tile pays several times.

What counts as a word

• At least three letters. There are no two-letter words.
• No abbreviations and no letter sequences that exist only as short forms.
• No proper nouns - no first names, no cities, no brands. Words derived from names do count, such as words for where someone comes from, like “Parisian”.
• There are no blanks. Every tile is the letter printed on it.

Words are checked against a fixed list per language. It is generous with inflections and restrained with anything that only turns up in technical writing.

Bonus squares

Twelve squares on the board are marked:

• Eight letter squares double the value of the tile placed on them.
• Four word squares double the value of the whole word.

A bonus counts only when you place the tile there in that move - for the next word running across the same square it is spent.

When nothing works

You have three ways out, and each costs one of your nine moves:

• Full exchange. Put back as many tiles as you like and draw the same number. What you put back is shuffled into the bag.
• Pass. You do nothing and hand over.
• Resign. The match ends at once and your opponent wins.

The tidy-up swap

Once per match, and it costs no move: right after you have placed a word, you may swap one leftover tile for a new one. The server refills your rack to seven first and puts the swapped tile back afterwards - so it cannot land straight back in your hand.

The end

• The match ends when both players have played their nine moves.
• Whoever has more points wins.
• A tie is a draw. There is no second measure that breaks it - not time, not the number of moves. Two equally good matches are equally good.

The three ways to play

Against the computer

Three strengths: Easy, Normal and Strong. The computer plays by the same rules as you - it does not see your letters and does not know the bag. This match runs entirely on your device.

Two players, one device

You hand the device over. Between moves there is a handover screen so nobody sees the other's rack. This match does not leave your device either.

Online duel over a link

You create an invitation and send the link on. Whoever opens it sees who is inviting them and joins - and off it goes. The link works once: as soon as somebody has joined, nobody else can enter that match.

• 120 seconds per move. The clock runs only for whoever is to play.
• Waiting costs you nothing. Even if your connection drops while the other one is thinking, nothing happens to you.
• If your turn clock runs out, the match is lost. That is the only deadline there is.
• If your connection drops while you are to play, your clock keeps running. Come back within the remaining time and you play on as normal.
• An online duel needs your progress kept on the device - otherwise your opponent is playing against somebody who ceases to exist when a tab closes.

Languages

WordSprig is played in German or English. The language decides which letters are in the bag, what they are worth and which word list applies - it is chosen at the start and holds for the whole match.

Where the words come from

The word lists come from the English-language Wiktionary and were written by the Wiktionary contributors. They were made machine-readable by Wiktextract (Kaikki.org, Tatu Ylonen). For WordSprig they were modified: filtered, limited to game words and converted to the spelling of the board (capital letters, ß as SS). Like their source, the modified lists are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).