How to play
Draw a path across the wheel from letter to letter and lift your finger to send the word. Tapping the letters and then the centre button works as well, and on a computer you can simply type and press Enter. Words need three letters or more, and every tile of the wheel can go into a word only once.
Grid words drop straight into their row or column and lend their letters to whatever crosses them. A genuine word the grid has no room for is kept in the bonus tally instead. Once every square of the little crossword is filled, the room is solved — and the longest word, the one that empties the wheel, is always part of that crossword.
Strategy that works
- Shuffle often. The same letters in a new order suggest new words. The shuffle button costs nothing.
- Look for endings first. In English, -ER, -ED, -ES and -ING are worth checking every time; build backwards from them.
- Use the grid's shape. The crossword shows the length of every missing word and any letters already in place. A three-letter gap that starts with T leaves only a few candidates.
- Go for the long word early. It fills the most squares and gives letters to almost every other word in the grid.
- Treat bonus words as scouts. They earn no squares, yet each one shows a letter pattern the wheel really allows.
The three floors
A floor-1 wheel holds five letters and hides four to six familiar words. Floor 2 adds a sixth letter and a couple of extra words. On floor 3 seven letters feed eight to ten words, crowned by a seven-letter one. The bonus list is complete: any listed word you can make from the wheel lands either in the crossword or in the tally, so a correct word is never turned away as unknown.
Questions
Why was my word not accepted?
Either it is not in the word list for this language (names, abbreviations and slang are left out) or it uses a letter more times than the wheel has it.
What are bonus words for?
They are real words that the grid does not need. They are counted in your result and are a good way to explore the wheel.
Does the wheel work without a touch screen?
It does: typing the letters builds the word, Enter sends it, Backspace drops the last letter and the space bar spins the wheel.
Is there always a word that uses every letter?
Yes. The longest word in the grid uses every letter on the wheel exactly once.
What does a hint do here?
It reveals one letter of a word that is still missing, in the grid itself.