Getting your game ready…
Press on a letter and slide through its neighbours, up, down, sideways or diagonally, then let go to play the word. A tile can be used once in each word, and a word needs at least three letters. As you trace, the word appears above the board and turns green with its points when it is one you have not found yet. Slide back over the previous letter to take it off. With a keyboard, simply type the word and press Enter; the board finds the trail for you.
Each board has a points goal, and the clock starts when you uncover the letters. Three- and four-letter words score 1 point, five letters 2, six letters 3, seven letters 5 and eight letters 11. Reach the goal before time runs out and the next board is yours, with a slightly higher goal. Fall short and Retry brings new letters with the same goal. Every word after the goal still adds to your score. Pause, or press P, covers the letters while you take a break.
After finding a word, check the tiles touching its last letter for an S, an E, a D or an R. STONE becomes STONES, RATE becomes RATED and RATER, and each longer word is worth more than the one inside it. A tile used at the start of one word is free again for the next, so a rich corner can give you a whole family of words.
Open with a burst of three- and four-letter words to get the goal moving, then use the calmer seconds to look for a long one around a cluster of vowels and common letters. One eight-letter word is worth eleven short ones. When the clock turns red, go back to quick words: ten seconds is enough for three or four.
Hunting for words in a grid of letter dice against a timer goes back to Boggle, invented by Allan Turoff and introduced in 1973. Here the dice are our own, weighted toward common English letters, with no Q to get stuck on. Each board on the trail is chosen so its goal can be reached with words most people know, and the summary shows the longest words you missed so you can trace them on the board.
Everyday English words of three to eight letters count, including plurals and forms such as RATED and EATING. Names, abbreviations and words with hyphens or apostrophes do not, and a handful of rude words are left out on purpose. The list draws on the public-domain ENABLE word list and Alan Beale’s 12dicts lists, so some older or less familiar words are accepted too.