CRUMBLE

Every word on the board fits the day’s theme. Trace one and it crumbles: the letters above fall, and words that were scattered come together. Clear the board.

• Drag across letters that touch — up, down, left or right — or tap them one at a time and press Check. Clear lets go.
• The slots over the board are the words to find. A lit slot is a word you can trace now; a dashed one is still scattered and comes together as letters fall.
• A real word that is off the theme is a decoy, and a mistake. A word that fits the theme but isn’t one of the board’s, or isn’t a common word at all, is refused and costs nothing.
• Not yet: sometimes a word is there, but taking it now would pull another apart for good. It is refused, free, and its slot keeps the letters.
• Hint numbers the next letter of a word you can take now. It counts as a mistake, so it asks twice.
• A clean board scores 100. Every mistake takes 15 points, and a cleared board never scores under 10. The last word standing crumbles on its own.

One puzzle a day — Gentle, Fair or Tricky by how many decoys are on the board. Your scores are kept — Statistics is in the menu — and Crumble sits outside the daily line-up, so it never moves your day’s total.

Read the full guide, with strategy