The letter observatory

Letter Wheel

One essential letter. A whole world of words.

Playable · practice preview

No daily editions of Letter Wheel are published yet. These are practice rounds: original, machine-validated and clearly labelled, but not yet through human editorial review. Difficulty labels are the author's intention, not calibrated evidence.

Master rounds are written for strong tile-game and cryptic-crossword players: obscure but valid vocabulary, denser puzzles and fewer helping hands. They are the hardest rounds here.

Gentle 16 rounds

Standard 16 rounds

Expert 22 rounds

Master 14 rounds

How to play

Make words of four or more letters from the nine on the wheel. Every word must use the centre letter, and each wheel letter once at most.

Making a word

Type, or tap the letters on the wheel, then press Submit (or Enter).
Every word needs at least four letters and must include the centre letter.
Each of the nine positions can be used once per word. If the wheel shows two of a letter, you may use it twice.
Only single words using A to Z count: no names, abbreviations, hyphens, spaces or apostrophes.
Shuffle rearranges the display only; it never changes which words are possible.

Scoring

Each word scores one point per letter.
A nine-letter word, using every position, earns a further nine points.
Rejected and repeated entries cost nothing; the reason is shown and your letters stay so you can correct them.

Everyday words and bonus words

Each wheel has a curated list of everyday words. Finding them all completes the round.
Any other word in the game's word list is accepted as a bonus word and scores normally.
After completing, you can keep hunting for bonus words; your result updates as you go.
Finish at any time to see what you found and how much was left unexplored.

Hints

Starting letter: the first letter and length of an everyday word you have not found.
First half: the first half of that same word.
Reveal: adds the word to your list. It counts towards completion but scores 0.
Nine-letter nudge: the first letter of a nine-letter answer.
Definition of a rarer word (Master only): an original definition, with length and first letter, of the shortest rarer target you have not found.
Hints never block completion; your result shows how many you used.

Difficulty

Gentle wheels have fewer everyday words and a vowel in the centre.
Standard wheels have more words to find.
Expert wheels put an awkward consonant in the centre, so familiar words are harder to spot.
Master wheels are written for strong Scrabble and crossword players: an awkward centre letter (J, K, V, W, Y, F, H and the like), a nine-letter answer that is hard to see (often more than one), and 40 to 90 target words drawn from familiar and less common vocabulary. Master rounds say "target words" rather than "everyday words", and every other word in the word list is a bonus.
Each difficulty is a different wheel. These labels are the author's intention and have not yet been calibrated with players.

Word list

Words are checked against a British English spellings list (ESDB). British -ise and recognised -ize spellings are accepted.
The list is large but not every word you know may be in it; the rest of your game is unaffected if a word is rejected.

Example

On a wheel with E D U C A T I O N and A in the centre, ACTION scores 6 and EDUCATION scores 9 + 9 = 18. DUCT is rejected because it has no A.

Release status for Letter Wheel

Engine rules and tests: passed · Pure engine, 15 unit/property tests, fixture maximum scores reproduced
Browser walkthrough (keyboard, touch, refresh, hint, completion): passed · tests/e2e/letter-wheel.spec.ts
Human editorial review of every round: open
Reviewed practice bank (10+ rounds per advertised difficulty): open
30 scheduled reviewed daily editions: open
Approved dictionary membership layer: open
Observed player pilot and difficulty calibration: open
Manual screen-reader and real-device checks: open