How to play Sprintile

Every race hides one word. Type any real word of the right length and press Enter; each tile reports how close you are. Fewest guesses wins; the clock breaks ties. Our server keeps the time, so it’s fair for everyone.

Reading the tiles

Difficulties

Every mode comes in three lengths. Results and leaderboards never mix difficulties.

• Easy: 4-letter words, 7 guesses, 3 hints.
• Normal: 5-letter words, 7 guesses, 3 hints.
• Hard: 6-letter words, 7 guesses, 3 hints.

Ways to play

• The Daily Race has one word per difficulty per day, the same for everyone, and one attempt at it. New words come at midnight Eastern (New York time). Accounts are ranked on daily, weekly, monthly and all-time boards, one set per difficulty. Today’s results at each difficulty stay hidden until you’ve finished that race, so nobody can see how hard the word is before they race it.
• Practice deals unlimited random words at any difficulty. It’s never ranked and never counts toward your stats. A good warm-up before the daily race.

Leaving mid-race

The clock starts when your board appears and stops when you finish. The Daily Race clock never pauses, even if you close the tab: we can’t check a pause from our side, and it would let anyone think off the clock. The Practice clock pauses while you’re away and picks up where it stopped. Practice isn’t ranked, so a pause needs no checking.

• Your board waits for you: come back the same day and pick up where you left off, with your guesses and hints.
• Each day’s race closes at midnight Eastern, when the next one opens. A race still unfinished then counts as unsolved: no points, and no solve for your streak that day. In the last 15 minutes of the day, we warn you before your board appears.
• Practice keeps an unfinished word for 24 hours. New word skips it and deals a fresh one. A skipped word counts as unsolved.

Hints

Stuck? Tap the lightbulb key, then tap it again to confirm. Each hint places one letter of the word in its right spot, picked from the spots you haven’t found yet. It shows in that spot on every row for the rest of the game, and you type it in yourself: every guess must have it there. Your guesses never use up hints, but a hint never gives away the last letter. Hints are optional. Hint-free solves always rank first. Each hint costs 150 points on the weekly, monthly and all-time boards.

Scoring

Daily results rank hint-free solves first, then by guesses, then by time. Unsolved results rank last. Each solved Daily Race earns (guesses allowed + 1 − guesses used) × 100 points, plus a speed bonus of up to 99 points that shrinks evenly to 0 at that difficulty’s time budget (3 minutes on Easy, 5 minutes on Normal, 7 minutes on Hard), minus 150 points for each hint you used. An unsolved race earns 0. The speed bonus is worth less than one guess, so with the same hints, fewer guesses always scores more. Weekly, monthly and all-time boards rank by average points per race, so playing more never outranks playing better. You’re ranked once you’ve raced on at least half of the board’s days so far (never more than 30 races for all time), and only while you’ve raced in the last 14 days.

Streaks and freezes

Solve a difficulty’s Daily Race on consecutive days to build a streak. Every 7 days in a row banks a streak freeze (up to 2); a freeze automatically covers a day you miss so the streak survives.

Tips

• Open with common letters, then use the crossed-off keys to plan your next word.
• Apricot letters tell you where a letter isn’t, which is as useful as where it is.
• Speed matters only on ties: take the guess you’re sure of over a fast one.

Start racing →