Word games

Kenning Word Guess has a campaign of 29 boards in six chapters: once the first chapter has taught the links come six-letter words, fog that hides one tile's colour in every row, a keyboard with missing letters and two words at once. Quire Word Search has 48 themed pages in six chapters, from a herbarium to a folio, each adding a rule: diagonal and backwards words, gold letters, fog, a clock and pages up to 13x14. Sorrel Word Wheel has 280 levels in seven chapters, from a kitchen garden to a frost garden, with seed cells, words hidden in mist, ripe words worth double, two wheels at once, a star tile that stands for any letter and seven-letter wheels. All three have a hard mode, and Quire's Classic mode is the plain word search at 10x10, 12x12 or 15x15 with nothing falling.

In Kenning Word Guess you type a word and press Enter: green with a bar means the right place, amber with a dot means the letter is elsewhere in the word, grey means it is not in it. Quire Word Search is played by dragging across a word on the page, from its first letter to its last or the other way round; finds made within a few seconds of each other raise the combo up to x3, cascades score double, and a Lens circles the first letter of a word you have not found. Sorrel Word Wheel takes a swipe across the wheel, one tap per letter or typing on a keyboard; seeds buy a Letter, a whole Word or a Sweep that shows one letter of every open word, and tapping a grid word first chooses which one gets the help.

Kenning Word Guess has its own word lists in English, Turkish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Polish and Ukrainian, with that language's letters on the keyboard. Quire Word Search has its own themed word lists in English, Turkish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, German, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Indonesian and Ukrainian. Open either game on a page in one of those languages and it plays that language's words; on any other page it plays English. Sorrel Word Wheel plays English words on every page of the site.

Each has a daily puzzle that is the same for every player that day: the daily word in Kenning, the daily page in Quire and a six-letter daily wheel in Sorrel. Each also has a friend mode over a room link. In Kenning's word duel you take turns guessing the same word on one board, both of you see every colour and whoever finds it scores it. Quire's race is three minutes on one page, where a word either player finds lifts for both and the higher score wins. In Sorrel's word race you both get the same wheel and grid, the first to spell a grid word claims it in their colour, and the race ends when the grid is full or after three minutes.

In Ballast Hangman a hidden word waits as blank tiles with a category clue, and every wrong letter hangs from a hot air balloon as a sandbag; the sixth sets it down. When the letters on your bags spell a word of three letters or more you can cut them loose, and the balloon climbs back. A flight is three to five words with the bags carrying over, and the campaign has 48 flights in six chapters, from Meadow Fair to the Northern Night, adding wind marks, a glyph cipher, two words at once and whole phrases. There is a hard mode and an endless Long haul.

Ballast has a daily flight of five words that is the same for every player, and its friend mode shares one word over a room link, taking turns: a hit keeps your turn and a miss loads your own balloon. It has its own word lists in English, Turkish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Indonesian, German, Italian, Polish, Dutch and Ukrainian, and plays English words on a page in any other language.