HOW TO PLAY: Begin the game by pressing 'START GAME'. When you do that, the instructions will disappear and the wordlist will move up. So, rtfm, friend! To attempt a word search, click or tap the first letter of the word, then the last letter.
SCORING: Words searched in the first minute of play yield 10 points each. That decreases to 5 in the second minute, 3 in the third, 2 in the fourth and 1 every minute thereafter. A bonus of 50 points is awarded for completing the puzzle in the first minute, 25 in the second, 10 in the third and five thereafter.
Careful though, an unsuccessful word search will subtract a point from your score!
HINTS: You may click on any of the clues to get the actual word you're looking for, but that will also subtract five points from your score!
The game must be running (i.e., the timer must be ticking) for you to interact with hints or the board!
HOW THIS ALL WORKS: Every time this page is refreshed, I try to rebuild a random puzzle from scratch. Like, even if the clues you receive are the same, the solutions may be in a different place on the board. Totally randomized. There are various factors that might prevent the puzzle from being generated correctly, and I'm working on that.
For instance:
When I try to place all of the puzzle's solution words and the algorithm that does that finds that it is impossible to do so, that's a problem. When that happens you will see a game board without a solution to all of the clue words.
I make calls to external services, one for the word list and one for the definitions, and I can't control what kind of response they will return. Generally, they're pretty good. However, they may return a 429 to indicate they've gotten too many requests from time to time. You won't see that in your browser unless you know how to look for it. Count to 10 and then refresh if that's the case.
Safari: Option + Command + C
Chrome: Shift + ctrl + J (windows); Option + Command + J (Mac)
Firefox: Shift + ctrl + J (windows); Shift + Command + J (Mac)
Edge...CTRL + Shift + I. Note: this hotkey works on several different browsers, so if nothing's working in Chrome, Firefox or Safari, give it a try.
The Wordlist is printed out in the console. You can cheat doing that. But you can also help me debug! Email me if you encounter a problem!