Glossary

The language of League of Words — from openers and isograms to time bonuses and the row pool. If a word puzzle term has you stumped, it's probably here.

Word-Game Basics

Opener: Your first guess. A strong opener spends common letters to reveal as much of the board as possible before you start narrowing in.
Tile States: The three colors a tile can turn after a guess. Green means the right letter in the right spot; yellow means the right letter in the wrong spot; gray means the letter isn't in the word at all.
Hard Mode: A stricter ruleset where every revealed hint must be used in all later guesses — greens stay locked in place and yellows must reappear somewhere. Tougher to play, and worth a scoring bonus.
Streak: The number of days in a row you have solved the Daily Word. Fail to solve, or skip a day, and it resets to zero.
Isogram: A word with no repeated letters, like HEART. The best openers are often isograms — they test five distinct letters in a single guess.
Anagram: A word made by rearranging the letters of another, like LISTEN and SILENT. Handy for spotting hidden options once you know which letters are in play.
Solve Rate: The share of games that end in a correct solve — yours, or everyone’s on a given word. A low solve rate is the mark of a genuinely hard word.
Guess Distribution: A breakdown of how often you solve in one guess, two, three, and so on. It is the clearest picture of how consistent your play really is.

Modes & Scoring

Daily Word: The single puzzle every player in the world gets each day. The word is identical for everyone and rolls over at your local midnight — which is what makes streaks and sharing fair.
Word Arcade: The endless mode. Solve multiple words per level on one shared board, as many levels as you like, any time of day.
Time Bonus: Points for speed. The clock starts on your first guess and the bonus shrinks steadily, reaching zero at the fifteen-minute mark.
Rows-Used Bonus: Points for efficiency. The fewer rows you spend solving the word, the more you keep.
Invalid-Word Penalty: A ten-point deduction each time you submit something that isn't a real dictionary word. The guess doesn't cost you a row — just points.
Hard-Mode Bonus: A flat reward for solving the Daily Word with Hard Mode switched on. Earn your hints the harder way, get paid for it.
Base Solve Points: In Word Arcade, the core points a solved word is worth, scaled by how many guesses it took you — fewer guesses, more points.
Word-Difficulty Bonus: Extra Arcade points awarded for harder words, weighted by how rare their letters are — think Scrabble tile values.
Level-Completion Bonus: The points tallied at the end of an Arcade level for leftover rows, the level number you reached, and any Hard Mode play.
Row Pool: In Arcade, the shared bank of guesses for an entire level. Every guess — solve or miss — draws one from the pool, so efficient guessing carries you further.
Sawtooth Progression: Arcade’s difficulty rhythm: each level ramps up, then eases slightly into the next tier, so the climb stays steep without becoming impossible.
Day Index: The behind-the-scenes counter — days since the game’s start date — that deterministically picks the same Daily Word for every player.
Phrase Mode: An experimental Arcade twist where the answer is a multi-word phrase instead of a single five-letter word.

Strategy

Elimination Guess: A guess played to rule letters out rather than to win. Sometimes the smartest move is a word you already know is wrong.
Letter Frequency: How common a letter is in English. Leaning on frequent letters — E, A, R, T — early in a game squeezes out the most information.
Vowel-Heavy Word: An opener loaded with vowels, like AUDIO, used to pin down where a word's vowels live before chasing consonants.

Leagues

Coming soon

League: A private group you compete in — friends, family, coworkers — playing the daily word for shared standings.
Commissioner: The person who runs a league: they set the rules, the dates, and how scoring works.
Standings: The ranked table of a league’s members, ordered by points or win-loss record.
Matchup: A head-to-head pairing between two league members for a scoring period — the higher score takes the win.
Season: A defined competitive stretch inside a league, often capped off with a playoff bracket.
Tier: Your lifetime rank, earned from your total points across every mode. It climbs as you keep playing.