Phrazle tips and strategies

Read the shape before you guess

The empty board already tells you a lot. You see how many words the phrase has and how long each one is, and that is often enough to rule out most ideas. A phrase of five words with lengths 1, 4, 2, 3 and 4 has a very different feel from one of two long words.

• One-letter words are almost always A. In idioms, a single letter is nearly always the article A, and only rarely I.
• Two-letter words are a small set. OF, IN, TO, ON, UP, AT, IS, IT, BY, AS, OR and NO cover most of them. OF and IN are the usual first tries.
• Three letters in the middle often means THE. After a two-letter word, as in "__ THE ____", the odds are high. AND, FOR, OUT, ALL and ONE are the next candidates.
• Look at the ends. A long last word often ends in -ING, -ED or -S, and four-letter words such as YOUR, WITH, THAT, THAN and LIKE appear in a lot of sayings.

Start with common short words

The short words are the cheapest letters on the board. Put your best guesses for them into your first try, and use the long words to test common letters such as E, A, R, T, O, I, N, S and L. Try not to repeat a letter inside one word on the first guess: two different letters tell you more than one letter twice.

Here the board shows words of 1, 3, 2 and 6 letters, and the first guess is A LOT OF PEOPLE:

Two of the four words are solved at once. The P is purple, so it belongs in another word; the only candidate is the three-letter word. The O and the first E are gold, so the last word contains them in other spots, and its final E is already right. With A _ _ _ OF _ _ _ _ _ E and a P in the second word, A CUP OF COFFEE is a natural second guess, and it is the answer.

Purple means: move it to another word

Purple is the color that makes Phrazle different from a single-word game. A purple letter is in the phrase, but not in the word where you put it. Do not try it again in the same word; ask which other word has room for it.

The first N is purple, so the phrase has an N, but in the second word. The second N in NOON is gray: there is no other N to find. The second word looks like _ORKING with one wrong letter, and with an extra N it can only be MORNING. The first word is _OO_ without N: GOOD, FOOD, WOOD or HOOD. GOOD MORNING is the obvious phrase:

A tip for purple and gold together: if a letter is gold in one word and purple in another, the phrase may contain it twice. The rule for repeated letters explains how each copy is colored.

Think in idiom patterns

English idioms are built from a small number of patterns. Once you have two or three words, try the frames below and see which one fits the lengths on the board:

• A ___ in the ___, a ___ of ___ and the ___ of the ___: a thing and where it is.
• As ___ as a ___: comparisons, usually with an animal or an everyday object.
• ___ and ___: fixed pairs of two short words that belong together.
• ___ the ___ and ___ your ___: a verb and an object, often an instruction or a warning.
• Out of the ___, on the ___, under the ___: a place or a state.
• Don't ___ the ___: advice, with the apostrophe already shown on the board.

Many idioms also rhyme or repeat a sound, and many use the same few themes again and again: animals, the body, food, weather and money. If you play a category, you already know the theme, which narrows the list a lot.

Use every clue on the board

• Check the keyboard. The keys keep the best color each letter has had. Gray keys are letters you can forget, unless you need a word that happens to contain one.
• Keep greens, test the rest. Your guess does not have to be the answer. If three words are solved and one is still open, a guess that tries five new letters in that word is often faster than guessing one possible word after another.
• Test several options at once. If the last word could be CATCH, MATCH, PATCH or WATCH, guessing them one by one may cost four tries. A guess that puts several of the possible first letters into another word, such as CAMP in a four-letter slot, shows you which of them are in the phrase.
• Say it out loud. Idioms are spoken more often than written. Reading the board aloud with the gaps as "hmm" sometimes brings the phrase to mind.
• Take a break. Your game is saved. Close the page, come back later, and a fresh look often finds the phrase.

When to use a hint

Hints do not use up a guess; each one costs a short ad, and they are counted in your result, your statistics and your shared score. They are most useful when you use them early enough to make a difference.

• Show the meaning when you have the shape but no idea. If you know several letters but cannot think of any phrase that fits, the meaning usually brings the idiom to mind at once. It also shows the category.
• Reveal a letter in the hardest word. Use it where you have the fewest greens, and prefer the first letter of a long word: first letters are the hardest to find by testing.
• Do not wait for the last guess. A hint before your fourth or fifth guess leaves you room to use it. On the sixth guess, one more letter may come too late.
• Keep one in reserve. You can reveal up to two letters per puzzle. Use the first, make a guess, and keep the second for later if the phrase is still unclear.

Practice without pressure

The best way to get faster is to play more puzzles. Unlimited gives you a new phrase whenever you want, and its statistics are kept apart from your Daily streak. The archive has every past Daily puzzle, and the theme pages, from the body to work and money, teach you the idioms of one subject at a time. After each game, read the meaning: the idioms you learn today are the ones you solve in two guesses next month.