F-WORD

Did you konw taht the hamuhn barin is azagilmny good at rdeanig wrdos eevn if the lertets are srmaclbed?

If that was fun to figure out, or if you like crosswords, Scrabble™, Boggle™, Words With Friends™, Bananagrams™, or other word-finding puzzle games then you'll enjoy F-WORD. Read on to learn how it works, and also where the cheeky name comes from!

The concept of F-WORD is simple. Try to find as many words as possible with the given letters.

Each puzzle starts with a 9-letter English word, the Seed Word. One the word's letters is chosen; that's the Key Letter. Next, the letters of the Seed Word are randomly assigned to a 3 by 3 grid, with the Key Letter in the middle.

For example, if the Seed Word is SWORDFISH, and the Key Letter is F, then the grid might look like:

W O D
R F H
S I S

Now, your job is to find words. The rules are:
1. Words can only use letters from the grid
2. Each letter can only be used as many times as it appears in the grid
3. The Key (center) Letter letter must be used in the word somewhere
4. Words must be at least 4 letters long
5. Words must be a 'real' English words*

For example, in the same example above, "FWORDS" could be formed**. The word DISH, on the other hand, violates rule #3 as it is missing the Key Letter 'F'.

You earn points with each word found. A word's score is based on how long and how common the word is.

Even puzzles with relatively few words have some obscure ones, and at some point you're going to need some assistance. Helpfully, you have some options! Hints are the main way to get unstuck. Tap over to the word list and tap any word you haven't found to bring up a menu that lets you see any hints you previously got for that word, ask for a new hint, or to reveal the word. Hints and reveals cost tickets which you earn in the game, by viewing ads, or by purchasing a ticket pack.

So -- what's up with the name? Well, see the row of dot-matrix style letters at the top of the screen? Notice how they are all made of dots in a 3 by 3 grid.. Getting the picture.. ?

.. Aside from the individual puzzles there's another challenge -- try to find each of the dot-matrix letters A-Z in the main letter grid with (correct) guesses. For the above example if you mark the letters used to form 'FWORDS', they form a dot-matrix F -- so in this puzzle the word FWORDS is itself an ... F-Word!

So an "F-Word" is something you will find at some point. And it will help you later.. Whenever there is a word you haven't found hiding in the shape of a letter that you have earned, that letter in the dot matrix display below the score will highlight. So maybe you have found the letter Z. If the puzzle you have is:

D W O
E R I
D F O

.. then the letter Z you previously found is highlighted, giving you a hint that FWORD can be formed out of the corresponding letters D W R F O that now also form a Z in the puzzle grid.

The more you play, the more letters you will find & the more help they will give you!

That's it for the gameplay. Some other features include:
• Daily puzzles that are the same for every F-WORD player in the world
• Daily gifts of tickets (5, 10, 25, 50, 100 or even unlimited for 24h)
• Save and Restore puzzles
• Shuffle letters: randomly change the locations of all the letters on the grid except for the middle letter
• Game Center integration
• Word List for each puzzle:
• Words found and not (yet) found, organized by word length
• Tap a found word to look up its definition on-line
• Ticket system:
• Get hints (definitions, examples, random letter revealed) about any word
• Reveal a word
• Shuffle letters
• Buy more tickets though in-app purchase
• Earn tickets for free by viewing ads
• Dark Mode support

* F-WORD uses a list of about 53,000 words, derived from a wordlist used in other games like Words With Friends™.

** Full disclosure: A small number of naughty words have been removed from the dictionary, but "FWORD" and "FWORDS" have shamelessly been added.