A word game that punishes vocabulary. You pour lettered cultures into a tray of wells, and any run of three or more letters that spells something - forwards, across or down - spoils those wells and seals them under glass for good. Common letters pay far more than rare ones and a well pays more for every neighbour it touches, so the tempting square is always the dangerous one, and filling a whole line of pure nonsense is the only way to get a tray back.
- Controls
- Tap a culture, then tap a well; hold over a well to see what it costs
- Device
- Desktop and mobile — touch controls built in
- Players
- 1 player
- Price
- Free, forever
- Made by
- Margin Notes
A tray of empty wells and three lettered cultures to choose from. Pour one into any well. If the letters you leave behind read as a word, you have spoiled the plate.
The word is the penalty
Any unbroken run of three or more letters that spells something counts, read left to right along a row or top to bottom down a column. Backwards does not count, and neither do diagonals. The wells that made the word are spoiled: they stop being letters, they are sealed under glass, and nothing can be poured into them again.
So the board carries your mistakes for the rest of the plate. Hold a culture over a well before you commit and the game names the word you would spell and lights up exactly which wells it would cost you. You are never guessing - you are deciding.
The letters you want are the letters that kill you
A culture pays by how common its letter is, so an E is worth many times a Q, and it pays again for every live neighbour the well already touches. An E dropped alone in a corner is worth almost nothing; the same E in the middle of a crowd is worth six times as much.
That is the whole game in one rule. Every other word game hands you a vowel as a gift and a Q as a problem. Here the safe play is the poor one, and the square that pays is the square with the most ways to spell something.
Nonsense is the only way back
Fill a complete row or column and the whole line is re-poured - spoiled wells included - and you get the space back. The payment depends on how much of that line was still live letters, so a line of pure gibberish pays enormously and one you patched with sealed glass barely pays at all.
You only have a few re-pours, and a rich enough line buys one back. Reject the tray if all three cultures are hostile, but there are only a few of those too.
The priority sample
Every few turns one well is ringed and pays six times over for that turn only. It always lands on the most crowded empty well on the tray, which is also the likeliest one to spell something.
A spoiled sample still reads, so the score is paid even when the pour goes wrong. Sometimes a short word is worth wearing for the points, and the game prints both halves of that bargain before you take it.