About Wordfall
Letters drop into an eight-column well and stack up. Spell a word out of whatever has landed and those letters leave, dropping everything above them — so a good word is both points and breathing room. Long words pay far more than short ones and hand back a Reveal, and words that arrive close together build a chain multiplier that is worth planning around. The well fills faster every fifty-five seconds. Type on a keyboard, tap on a phone; the dictionary is 133,000 words and it is bundled, so nothing is ever fetched and nothing is ever refused for being too ordinary.
How to play
- Letters fall one at a time into a well eight columns wide and seven tall. A run starts with three rows already in place.
- Spell a word of 3 to 10 letters using any letters in the well. They do not need to touch. Type it, or tap the tiles, then press Enter or Submit.
- The letters leave and everything above them drops, freeing space.
- Every 55 seconds letters arrive faster. When a letter lands on a full column, the run is over.
Tips
- Length is where the points are. A word scores its letter values times a length multiplier: ×1 for three letters, ×2 for five, ×3.8 for seven and ×8 for ten. One long word beats several short ones made of the same letters.
- Keep the chain alive. Each word within nine seconds of the last adds ×0.2 to the next word, up to ×3. A quick short word can be worth it just to hold the multiplier.
- Typing picks the helpful tile. When you type a letter, the game takes that letter from the tallest column it appears in, so typing always relieves the column closest to overflowing.
- Spend Reveals, then earn them back. You start each run with one Reveal (Tab). It stages a common word for you at half points. Any word of seven or more letters hands one back, up to five.
- Rare letters pay more. E, A, R, I, O, T, N and S score 1, while X, Z, J and Q score 8. Using a Q or X in a longer word clears a stubborn tile and multiplies well.
Read the full Wordfall guide (5 min read)
From the developer
Wordfall is a falling-letter word game I built on 10 September. Letters drop into an 8 by 7 well and stack up; spell a word from the letters that have landed and they leave, dropping everything above them. Long words pay far more, and the well fills faster every 55 seconds until a letter has nowhere to land. It is plain JavaScript on one canvas, with synthesised sound and no outside requests.
The dictionary was most of the work. I used the BSD word list web2, from Webster's Second International of 1934, because its provenance is stated and checkable. It is a headword list, though, with CAT but not CATS, and shipping every inflected form would have added over a megabyte. So plurals and other regular endings are stripped at lookup time by a dozen English rules, and 522 hand-written words cover irregular forms, modern words and gaps in the source; web2 has BOXCAR but not BOX. Against about 2,200 everyday words and inflections, coverage is 100%.
Reveal and the results screen draw on a separate list of 1,115 ordinary words, because the best-scoring word in a list of 133,000 can be MOCKFUL, and a hint like that reads as a broken game. The tiles, buttons and stars are from Hyper Casual UI Pack by Smashy Tech.
Son Hoang, who made Wordfall
Update history
- Added music: Seafarers Legacy - Tidal Treasures from Phat Phrog Studio's Free RPG Music Collection.
- The game-over line no longer says '0 short of your best' after a first run or a tie.
- Removed the 'Watch a video' buttons, which could never pay out here; Reveals stay free, one back for every seven-letter word.
- Glossy letter tiles, themed buttons and up to three result stars.
- The loading bar follows the real download of the 515 KB dictionary, and every screen fits without scrolling.
- Text now scales with the screen; on a laptop the smallest labels had been 8 pixels.
- First version: letters fall into an 8 by 7 well; spell words from what has landed to clear them.
Questions
Does Wordfall save my scores?
Yes, in your browser on this device. It keeps your best score, best single word, longest word, lifetime word and run counts, today's stats, your daily streak and the sound setting. A run in progress is not saved.
Which words are accepted?
A bundled English dictionary of about 133,000 words, 3 to 10 letters long. Plurals, -ed and -ing forms and British spellings such as colour are accepted. Slurs and explicit words are refused.
Can I play without a keyboard?
Yes. On a phone or tablet, tap letters in the well to build a word and use the Submit, Clear and Reveal buttons under it. Tap a chosen tile again to take it back.
How long does a run last?
It depends on how quickly you find words. A word every 18 seconds lasted under three minutes in testing, while a word every ten seconds lasted around six. There is no ending other than the well filling.
