How to play Phrazle

How to play

Phrazle is a puzzle game where you have to guess a phrase made up of several words. You have only six attempts to correctly guess the phrase. Each guess must include only words that are legitimate and use all spaces. Each time you guess, you'll get color-coded clues about the placement of letters in individual words and in the entire phrase.

Green: The letter is in that word and in the correct position.

Gold: Although it is in that word, the letter is in the incorrect location.

Purple: The letter is in the phrase but not in that word.

Gray: Letters are not in the phrase.

Examples

The letter U is in the first word and in the correct spot

The letter T is in the first word but in the wrong spot

The letter O is in the phrase but not in the second word

The letter O is not in the phrase

The board: words, spaces and fixed tiles

The hidden phrase is an English idiom, saying or common expression of two to seven words. The board shows it as groups of empty tiles, one group per word, with a gap between the words. So before your first guess you already know the shape of the phrase: three words of four, three and five letters, for example.

Some phrases contain an apostrophe or a hyphen, as in "don't" or "well-known". These are shown as fixed tiles that are already filled in. You never type them; the cursor simply jumps over them, and each part of a hyphenated word is checked on its own.

Your current guess is shown at full size. Guesses you have already made move up and get smaller, so all six rows and the keyboard fit on one phone screen. Empty outlines show how many guesses you have left.

Typing your guess

• Tap the letters on the on-screen keyboard, or type on a physical keyboard. Letters fill the current row from left to right.
• Spaces between words and fixed tiles are skipped automatically, so you type the phrase as one long string of letters.
• The Backspace button under the board (or the key on a physical keyboard) deletes the last letter and moves back across the gap into the previous word when needed.
• Tap any tile of your current row to move the cursor there and change that letter. On a physical keyboard the arrow keys move the cursor too.
• Submit under the board, or Enter on a physical keyboard, sends the guess. It works only when every tile of the row is filled; otherwise the game says "Not enough letters".

The Hint, Backspace and Submit buttons sit in one row right under the board, so the on-screen keyboard holds only letters. Esc closes any open window and the hint panel.

Words that are not in the word list

Every word of your guess must be a real English word. The guess does not have to be a real phrase, and the words do not have to fit together, which gives you a lot of freedom to test letters.

If a word is not in the game's word list, your guess is not counted. The game names the words it does not accept, for example "Not in word list: TEAPOTS", and those tiles shake. Fix the word and press Submit again; you have not lost a try.

Reading the colors: a full game

Let's play one puzzle from start to finish. The board shows three words of four, three and five letters. The first guess is NICE TOY LATCH:

The first word ends in E and has I second. N is purple, so it belongs to another word. In the second word, O is green and T is purple. The last word starts with L and ends in CH, and its gray T tells us that T is not in that word: the T must be in the first word. A five-letter word L _ _ C H with an N is almost certainly LUNCH.

LUNCH is right, and so are TI_E and _OR. The D and the N are gray, so the first word is not TIDE and the second is not NOR. TIME and FOR fit the meaning of lunch nicely:

Solved in three guesses. The result window now shows the phrase, its meaning, its category and your statistics.

Repeated letters

When a letter appears more than once, each copy in your guess is colored only if the phrase has a matching copy left. Phrazle colors your guess in this order:

1. Green first: every letter in exactly the right spot of its word.
2. Then gold, word by word: a letter is gold if the same word still has an unmatched copy of it in another spot.
3. Then purple, from left to right over the whole phrase: a letter is purple if another word still has an unmatched copy of it.
4. Everything else is gray.

Here the hidden phrase is SEE YOU SOON, and the guess is EYE OWE NOON:

• In EYE, the last E is green. The first E is gold because SEE has a second E in another spot. Y is purple: it belongs to YOU.
• In OWE, the O is gold because YOU has an O in another spot. The E is gray: the phrase has only two E's, and both are already marked in EYE.
• In NOON, both O's and the final N are green. The first N is gray because SOON has only one N.

The keyboard keeps the best color each letter has had so far: green beats gold, gold beats purple, and purple beats gray.

Hints

Press the Hint button under the board to open the hints. Each hint opens after a short ad. There are two kinds:

• Show the meaning. The category of the phrase and a one-line explanation of what it means appear above the board. You can use it once per puzzle.
• Reveal a letter. Tap a tile of your current row, and the correct letter appears there in green and stays locked in place; typing skips over it. You can reveal up to two letters per puzzle. Every word keeps at least one letter that is not revealed, so a one-letter word such as A cannot be revealed.

Hints do not use up any of your six guesses. The number of hints you used is shown in your result, in your statistics and in the text you share.

Daily, Unlimited, categories and archive

• Daily

  Two new puzzles a day on the home page, one at midnight and one at noon in your local time, with a countdown to the next. Win at least one each day to build your streak.

• Unlimited

  A new random phrase whenever you want in Unlimited. Each puzzle has its own link that you can share. Here the streak counts wins in a row, and a loss resets it.

• Categories

  Endless puzzles on one theme, such as animals or colors. See all ten categories.

• Archive

  Every past Daily puzzle in the archive, including one you started and did not finish. Archive games do not change your Daily statistics or streak.

Your result and sharing

When you find the phrase, or after your sixth guess, the result window shows the phrase, its meaning and category, how many guesses and hints you used, and your statistics for that mode: games played, win percentage, current and longest streak, how many guesses your wins took and the hints you have used in total.

The Share button sends your result to another app on a phone and copies it on a computer. The first line names the puzzle and your score, such as "Phrazle #12 4/6" ("X/6" for a loss); a second line such as "1 hint" appears only if you used hints. Then comes one row of colored squares per guess, with a space between words (orange and blue squares in high-contrast mode), and a link to the puzzle. The squares show only colors, never letters, so you can post them without spoiling the puzzle.

Saving and settings

Phrazle saves your current game, your statistics and your settings in your browser as you play. Close the page, come back later, and the board is exactly as you left it. The data stays on your device, so it does not move to another phone or computer, and clearing your browser's data for this site deletes it. If you played the earlier version of Phrazle in the same browser, your old Daily statistics are added to your English Daily statistics, and your old practice games to Unlimited, the first time you open the new game.

In Settings you can choose a light, dark or automatic theme, switch to high-contrast colors (orange for the right spot, blue for the same word, purple for another word), turn sound and vibration (on phones) on or off, reduce animations, change the language and replay the three-step tutorial. You can also replay it from the How to play window. Ready? Play today's puzzle or read our tips first.