HELIX

How to play

Four secret five-letter words sit in a chain. The last letter of each word is the first letter of the next one.

For example: CHASE, then EAGLE, then EMBER, then ROAST. Chase ends in E and eagle begins with E; eagle ends in E and ember begins with E; ember ends in R and roast begins with R.

Two readings on every guess

• Letters. Green means right letter, right place. Yellow means right letter, wrong place. Grey means the letter is not in that word.
• Heat. A second, separate reading: how close your guess is in meaning. Hot says you have the right idea even when every tile is grey. Spelling and meaning are independent clues, and you need both.

The chain does the work

Crack any link and it pins a letter on both of its neighbours — the link before it learns its last letter, the link after it learns its first. Solving out of order is a real option.

One pool of guesses

You start with 12 guesses total, not 12 per link. Spend them on whichever link you like. Every link you crack hands back 2 guesses, so momentum pays for itself. Run the pool dry with links still hidden and the day is over.

A new helix every day. Switch links by clicking them, by pressing 1–4, or with ← →. Type to guess and press Enter to play it.

Statistics

Daily puzzles only. Practice games are not counted.

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