How to play Grow
A word tree that grows from the bottom up. Make a word of three letters, then add one letter a row and rearrange them all into a new word, up to seven. Any real word counts and a wrong try costs nothing. One tree a day, on the second shelf, outside the daily line-up.
Play today's Grow · Watch the gameplay demo
The rules
- Five rows, from three letters to seven, growing upward. The bottom row is three letters to make a word of; every row above it is the letters below plus one more, shown beside the row before you get there.
- Tap the letters into the row. A full row checks itself. Tap a letter in the row to take it back; Clear empties the row and Shuffle re-deals the tray.
- The tray never spells a word. The letters are dealt scrambled every row, and the one the row adds is marked in green.
- Any real word of those letters counts, not only the one we had in mind — every row carries its complete list. The next row’s letters are the same whichever word you made.
- A wrong try costs nothing. The row shakes and you try again, as often as you like.
- Hint locks the next letter of the row’s commonest word, left to right, and takes 8 points from that row. It asks you to tap twice. Lock all but one letter and the row spells itself out, for nothing.
- One puzzle a day. The words you have made and the hints you have spent are saved as you go, so a refresh is not a second attempt; the archive holds every past day.
Strategy
- Look for the new letter’s partners. An added H wants a T, a C or an S beside it; an added E often makes an ending — -ED, -ER, -ES. Find the pair and the rest falls in.
- Try the ends first. Sometimes the new letter simply goes on the front or the back of the word below. On common words a tree allows that once at most, and never as a plain plural — so if one row came easy, expect the others to make the letters move.
- Pull out an ending. With six or seven letters, set aside -ING, -ED, -ER or -LY if the letters are there and anagram what is left.
- Shuffle before you spend. A new arrangement is free and often enough; a hint is 8 points.
- The row below is only a foothold. The word you made down there need not survive — the letters often have to move.
- The hints are the score, not the time and not the wrong tries. There is no clock.
Scoring
The five rows share 100 equally, 20 points each. A hint takes 8 from its own row and never more than the row holds; a row the hints spelled out scores nothing. So a tree grown with no hints is 100, one hint is 92, and a row spelled out costs 20. Each day is Gentle, Fair or Mean — computed from how far the letters have to move and how common the words are — and all three score on the same scale. Grow sits outside the daily line-up, so its score never moves your day’s total.
Full details on how scoring works.