How to Play

The goal

Every day Lettra gives you one category — Breakfast Cereals, say, or Things in a Toolbox — and a board of all 26 letters. Your job is to name a word that fits the category for as many of those letters as you can before your time runs out.

One puzzle a day, the same puzzle for everyone, and a result you can share as a grid of coloured squares without spoiling the answers.

Your word's first letter is the one you claim

You never pick a letter separately. Type tiger and you have answered T. Type cat, apple and tiger and you have claimed three letters — C, A and T.

Capitals and spaces are ignored.

What counts as a valid answer

A word is rejected unless all three of these are true:

  • Its first letter is still open on the board.
  • It is a real word.
  • It is on the day’s answer list.

The clock is elastic

Lettra does not give you a fixed countdown. You start with a small buffer of time that drains continuously, and every accepted answer adds 3 seconds back. Keep answering and the round keeps going; stall and it ends.

Difficulty changes only how much time you start with: 35s on Relaxed, 30s on Standard, and 22s on Hard. The round ends when the buffer drains, or whenever you choose to press Finish.

Scoring

  • 100 points for every letter you lock.
  • +25 points for each rare letter you lock.
  • +12 points per second still on the clock when you finish, so banking time is worth something.

Rare letters

Each day the 3 letters with the fewest possible answers are marked with a coloured dot from the very start of the round — you are told which ones are hard before you spend time on them. Locking one pays +25.

Struck-through letters

A letter shown struck through has no valid answer at all that day. It costs you nothing and it leaves your score’s denominator — if three letters are struck, the board is scored out of 23 rather than 26.

Why was my word rejected?

Every category has a hand-checked list of answers, built and verified before the puzzle ships. That list is the outer limit of what the day will accept.

Separately, Lettra carries a 172,000-word English dictionary, which lets it tell two very different misses apart. Type something that is not a word and it will say so. Type a real word that simply is not on today’s list — tiger on a Breakfast Cereals day — and it tells you that instead.

So a word you consider perfectly fair can still be turned down. That is the trade for every puzzle being checked by a person rather than guessed at by an algorithm.

Do replays count?

You can replay a puzzle as often as you like, but the first attempt is the one that feeds your streak and your stats. Replays are kept as your best-ever score, so practising never costs you anything.

Still stuck?

If something is not working, or a word you are sure about keeps being turned down, email support@lettra.app and tell us the date and the word. Answer lists are hand-built, so genuine misses do get added.