How to play Crumble
A board of thirty-six letters, and every word hidden in it fits the day’s theme. Trace a word and it crumbles; the letters above fall, and words that were scattered come together. Clear the board. A real word that is off the theme is a mistake. One board a day, on the second shelf, outside the daily line-up.
Play today's Crumble · Watch the gameplay demo
The rules
- The theme is shown over the board — “In the kitchen”, “Weather”, “What was that noise?” — and every one of the board’s six to eight words fits it. Words are four to seven letters, and every letter belongs to exactly one word.
- Trace a word by dragging across letters that touch — up, down, left or right, never diagonally — or tap them one at a time and press Check (tapping the last letter again does the same). Clear lets go of the letters.
- A traced word crumbles, the letters above it fall into the gap, and words whose letters were scattered come together. Most of a board’s words cannot be traced on the board as you first see it.
- The slots over the board are the words to find, longest first. A lit slot is a word that can be traced now; a dashed one is still scattered.
- A real word that is off the theme is a decoy, and a mistake, charged once. 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 in line, but taking it now would pull another word’s letters apart for good. The board refuses it, free, and its slot keeps the letters until its turn comes — so a board can never be left unclearable.
- Hint numbers the next letter of a word you can take now. It counts as a mistake, so it asks you to tap twice.
- The last word standing crumbles on its own.
- One puzzle a day. The words you have cleared, your mistakes and your hints are saved as you go, so a refresh is not a second attempt; the archive holds every past day.
Strategy
- Start from the theme, not the letters. Think of what belongs — in a kitchen, a WHISK, a LADLE, a SKILLET — and look for its first letters, instead of tracing whatever word you happen to see.
- The slots tell you the lengths. If a five-letter slot is lit, a five-letter word of the theme is in line right now.
- Ask whether it fits before you lift. A drag is judged when your finger comes up. STOLE is a word; it is not in the kitchen.
- Mind the shorter word inside a longer one. A drag that stops a letter early can be a word of its own. Carry on to the end before you lift.
- Work from the bottom. Letters only fall, never slide sideways, so taking a word low on the board moves the most above it.
- The mistakes are the score, not the time and not the refusals. There is no clock.
Scoring
A clean board is 100. Every mistake — a decoy traced, or a hint — takes 15 points, and a cleared board never scores under 10. So one decoy and one hint is 70. Each day is Gentle, Fair or Tricky, by how many decoys the board carries — a handful, a dozen or so, or a couple of dozen — the three come round evenly, never the same two days running, and all score on the same scale. Crumble sits outside the daily line-up, so its score never moves your day’s total.
Full details on how scoring works.