VerbolusHow to Play Letter Golf
Rules
You're given a handful of letters, each with a count, plus a small budget of wildcards. Using only those letters (and no more of each than you're given), spell real words until every letter—and every wildcard you choose to use—is used up. There's no limit on word length, and a word can be any length as long as it's a valid dictionary word.
A wildcard stands in for any single letter of your choice. Every puzzle is guaranteed to have at least one solution using the visible letters plus your wildcard budget. Occasionally a puzzle also has a solution using zero wildcards at all—that's a hole in one, and you'll be told if you found it.
Worked example
Say your letters are A, A, T, T, S with 1 wildcard. You could play TATS (using T, A, T, S) and then use your last A plus the wildcard to play A and something else—or, more efficiently, spot that STATA uses every letter and the wildcard in one word. Fewer words generally means a better score, but any combination that uses everything up is a win.
Common questions
- Do I have to use every wildcard? No—only if you need to in order to use up all the letters.
- Can I delete a word I've already played? Yes, played words are listed and can be removed at any time before you submit.
- What counts as a valid word? Anything in the dictionary the puzzle checks against—proper nouns and abbreviations generally don't count.
Strategy tips
- Look for one long word that uses most or all of the letters before falling back to several short ones.
- Save wildcards for the letters you're shortest on, not the ones you already have plenty of.
- If you're stuck, try common letter pairs and endings (-ED, -ING, -ER, -S) to see what unlocks.
Scoring
Lower scores are better. If you complete the puzzle with a single word, your score is 1 point even if that word used wildcards (a strict hole-in-one is the subset: one word with zero wildcards). For all other completions, your score equals the number of words used plus the number of wildcards actually used. Wildcard usage is still shown in summaries.
Daily vs. Practice
Daily is one shared puzzle for everyone, once per day, and it's what counts toward your streak and group standings. Practice generates a new puzzle on demand, as many times as you like, so you can warm up or try a different approach with no pressure.