How to play Wordchain

You are given the first word of a chain and the last. Everything between them is yours to fill in, and the rule is the same at every step: each word and the one after it have to make a phrase people actually say.

Black coffee, coffee table, table tennis. Each pair stands on its own — the first word and the last are not a phrase, and they are not meant to be. You are building a path between them one ordinary phrase at a time.

What counts as an answer

A word has to be a real word, and it has to be the one the puzzle is looking for. Those are the only two ways a guess is turned down.

When you are stuck

The first letter of each word appears once the word above it is in place. Every wrong guess shows you one more letter of it — so the board opens up as you work, and a word you cannot see at all becomes a word with most of it on the table.

The last letter is never revealed. There is always one step left for you to take, however long you stay with a board.

The three levels

A chain is 7 words on the first level, 9 on the second and 11 on the third. The longer chains are harder for the obvious reason and for a less obvious one: the words in the middle of a hard chain are drawn from further down the list of words people use, so the phrases joining them are less likely to be the first ones that come to mind.

Playing here

A chain cannot be failed. There is no timer running out and no limit on guesses — a board stays where you left it until you finish it, and the number of guesses it took is what gets recorded when you do.

Boards are unlimited and there is no account to make.