Droply

Droply is a free daily word game you play in your browser: a word puzzle that crosses Scrabble with Connect Four. Thirty letters come one at a time. Tap a column and the letter falls to the lowest empty spot of a 5 by 6 board. Words count in straight lines, across, down or diagonally, and they read either way, so a word can run backwards or upwards as well as left to right. Every letter you are dealt can be used: the thirty come from a full board of words, taken apart, so a board where every tile is part of a word is always possible. It is one of our daily word puzzles, with the same letters for everyone each day.

You can see the current letter and the next two, so you can save a spot for what is coming: the top of a column for an S, a gap beside a vowel. When a letter fits nowhere yet, put it in Hold. A held letter waits there until you want it, and tapping Hold again swaps it with the letter in hand, as often as you like. When the letters run out, the held one is the last to place. There is no clock: take as long as you like over every drop, because thinking it through is the game.

Scoring is about how many words your board holds. A three-letter word scores 10, four letters 20, five letters 40, six letters 70 and seven letters (with the Qu tile) 120. Words inside words count too, so TOWNS also gives you TOWN, OWNS, TOW and OWN. A word scores once for every place it sits: the same word on other tiles scores again and shows as ×2. When the board is full, every word adds a bonus (+1 for three letters up to +50 for seven), and a clean board, where every tile is part of at least one word, adds 100 more. The par in the corner is what a simple bot scores with the same letters.

At the end your board lights up: every tile warms by how many words run through it, and tiles in no word turn dark. Your score counts up, and you get a share card with one square per row of the board, so you can compare days with friends without giving the letters away. The dictionary is a full English word list for four to seven letters and the familiar three-letter words, with crude words left out. If you like word grid games such as Boggle, or games like Wordle that you play once a day, Droply sits right beside them among our word games and brain games.

It plays the same on a phone or a computer. On a phone or tablet, tap a column to drop the letter and tap Hold to hold or swap. With a mouse, point at a column to see where the letter will land, then click. On a keyboard, press 1 to 5 to drop into a column, move along with the arrow keys and press Enter, and press H to hold. A board takes most players three to six minutes, and a new set of letters arrives every day at midnight ET. Find more like it among our daily games, mobile games and PC games.