Word policy

Two lists do two different jobs: a short list of familiar words for the puzzles we set, and a much larger list for the guesses we accept, so you are never marked wrong for a real word.

Answers we set

• Search words and anagram answers come from the common part of the word lists (about 40 thousand words) and pass a taste filter: no slurs, sexual, violent, medical-distress or brand words.
• On top of that, an editor reads every edition before it is locked. Words that are correct but out of tune with a relaxed puzzle (crime, illness, slang double meanings, words that read as names) are left out; the list is kept with the site's source.
• Anagram answers are everyday words, not plurals or past tenses of other words. Ladder start and goal words are common words too.
• We prefer dialect-neutral answers: a word with a familiar British or American spelling partner (colour and color) is not used as an answer.

Guesses we accept

• Anagrams: any word in the accepted list (about 184 thousand words) that uses every letter, repeats included, scores exactly the same as the answer we had in mind. After you solve one, the round lists the familiar alternatives.
• Word Ladder: any 1,014 3-letter, 3,991 4-letter, 8,826 5-letter accepted words, including plurals and less familiar words. British and American spellings both count.
• Names, abbreviations and offensive words are not accepted.

How puzzles are checked

• Word Search: every listed word appears exactly once in the grid, checked along every row, column and diagonal in both directions. The same letters read the other way are the same find; a second place would be a duplicate, and such grids are never published. The filler letters are also checked so they never spell an offensive word.
• Anagrams: each prompt's accepted set is every word in the accepted list with exactly those letters. No two prompts in the first 60 editions share the same letters.
• Word Ladder: par is recomputed by a breadth-first search over the whole accepted dictionary, so a rare word cannot sneak in a shorter route than par. Every edition ladder also has a route of familiar words exactly as short as par, and hints are worked out from your current word.

Editions don't change

Once an edition is published, its grid, anagrams and ladder stay as they were, with a record of the word lists and game versions they were made from. Corrections go into new editions, not old ones.

Found a word we got wrong?

Tell us at support@twindle.nl with the word and the edition. We read every message.

Where the lists come from is on the credits page.