Letter Loom

Spending attempts and hints well

Five rounds, and a fresh scramble each time

Each round presents one word with its letters shuffled into a random order. You get three attempts to identify it. The puzzle order is shuffled at the start of every game, and the letters themselves are re-scrambled, so replaying does not hand you a remembered answer.

A hint is available in every round at a fixed cost. It is optional, it can be taken at any point in the round, and taking it does not consume one of your three attempts — it only reduces what a correct answer is worth.

The round ends when you answer correctly or exhaust your three attempts. After five rounds the game ends and your total is recorded.

Guess first, hint second — the maths says so

The scoring makes this decision precise rather than a matter of feel. Every attempt you spend costs you a hundred points, and a hint costs a hundred points. Those are identical prices, which means a wrong guess and a hint cost exactly the same.

That symmetry has a clear consequence: guess before you hint. A guess might be right, in which case you paid nothing. A hint is never right on its own — it only makes a later guess more likely. When two options cost the same and one can end the round immediately, take that one.

The exception is the third attempt. With one attempt remaining, a wrong guess ends the round at zero for that word, while a hint still leaves you a paid-for shot at a reduced score. So the rule inverts at the end: guess freely on attempts one and two, and consider buying the hint before committing your last one.

• Look for common endings first — a trailing pair like -ing or -ed anchors several letters at once and collapses the search dramatically.
• Identify the vowels and count them; the ratio of vowels to consonants rules out a large share of possible arrangements immediately.
• Say candidates aloud — recognition is faster than reconstruction, and hearing a word often surfaces it when reading does not.

What a round is worth

A correct answer scores 250 as a base, plus 100 for each attempt still unused, minus 100 if you revealed the hint. Answering first time with no hint is therefore worth 450 — the maximum for a single round, and 2,250 across a perfect game.

Because attempts remaining are counted at the moment you answer, the cost of a wrong guess is immediate and permanent. There is no recovery mechanism and no bonus for finishing the game quickly.

Common mistakes

The two biggest leaks are buying information too early and too late.

• Taking the hint immediately. It costs the same as a wrong guess but cannot win the round on its own, so it is strictly the worse opening move.
• Burning the last attempt on a hunch. With one attempt left a miss scores zero, while the hint still leaves you a chance at 150 — this is the one moment the hint is clearly correct.
• Retyping a near-miss. Each submission spends an attempt whether or not it was close, so re-submitting a small variation of a rejected answer is an expensive way to test a letter.
• Assuming the words repeat in order. Both the puzzle order and the letter scramble are randomised each game, so a remembered sequence does not transfer.

What is different about this version

Answers are normalised before comparison — trimmed of surrounding whitespace and case-folded — so a capital letter or a trailing space can never cost you an attempt. Only a genuinely different word counts as a wrong guess.

The hint cost is announced to assistive technology before you activate it, so its price is known in advance rather than discovered after the fact. Both the puzzle order and each word’s scramble are shuffled with an unbiased algorithm, which keeps every arrangement equally likely rather than favouring orders close to the original.

Written by the Silverweb Games team from this game’s own implementation. Last reviewed July 31, 2026.