If you ever played Hangman on the back of a notebook, you already know half of this game. The other half is the clue, and the clue changes everything.
Spell It Out gives you a clue and a row of blank tiles. You find the answer one letter at a time. Every wrong letter burns out one of your six bulbs, so the game is really about how few mistakes you can make. It's one of four free bonus modes that came with Trend Trivia® 1.6.0, along with Fact or Fiction, Ballpark and Clue by Clue. It's free for everyone and it lives on the home screen under Solo Play.
How a round works
A round is five puzzles. Each one has a clue on a card with its topic chip, and under it a board of blank tiles, one tile for each letter of the answer. Answers can be a single word or a name of up to three words. Multi-word answers keep a visible gap between words and never split a word across two lines, so before you touch a key you already know how many words you're looking for and how long each one is. Answers are letters only. No numbers, no hyphens, no apostrophes.
At the bottom is the game's own A to Z keyboard. Your phone's keyboard never pops up. Tap a letter and one of two things happens.
- It's in the answer. Every copy of that letter flips into place at once, and the message line tells you how many there were ("Yes, there is one O"). Right guesses cost you nothing.
- It isn't. The board gives a little shake and a bulb flickers out. Bulbs go out from right to left, so a glance at the row tells you exactly how much room you have left.
Letters you've already tried stay marked on the keyboard, so you won't burn a bulb on the same letter twice. Fill in the whole answer and the puzzle is solved. Lose all six bulbs and it's over: the rest of the answer flips in on red tiles so you at least find out what it was.
The hint button
Next to the message line is a Hint button. It costs one bulb, and in exchange it fills in every copy of the most common letter you haven't found yet. You can't use it on your last bulb, so it can never be the thing that loses you a puzzle.
The way to think about it: a hint costs exactly what a wrong guess costs, but it always lands. So it's a good deal when your next guess is basically a coin flip, and a bad deal when you're fairly sure of your next letter. Because it picks the most common missing letter, it also tends to fill in more tiles earlier in a puzzle than it does late.
How scoring works
A solved puzzle is worth 100 points plus 50 for every bulb still lit when you finish. Solve with all six lit and that's 400. Solve on your last bulb and it's 150. A puzzle you don't solve is worth nothing. A perfect round, five puzzles with no bulbs lost, comes to 2,000.
The XP at the end is based on how many puzzles you solved out of five, with a big bonus for solving all five, and your daily streak multiplier applies on top. Playing a round of Spell It Out also counts toward your daily streak.
The results screen
The results screen opens with five bulbs that light up one at a time, one for each puzzle you solved, each with its own little ding. Below that are three stats: Solved, Bulbs saved (the total you had left across the round), and Perfect solves (puzzles you finished without losing a single bulb). The This round card lists all five answers, including the ones that got away.
How to solve more boards
Read the clue before you touch the keyboard. It sounds obvious, but the clue plus the tile count gets you there more often than you'd think. If you're sure of the answer, just spell it. Correct letters are free, so knowing the answer means you solve it with all six bulbs.
Only wrong letters matter. You can guess twenty letters and still get a perfect solve, as long as every one of them is in the answer. So don't be shy about a letter you're confident in, and be very careful about one you're not.
Longer answers are often easier boards. This surprises people. A long answer is full of common letters, so almost anything reasonable you guess will land. A short answer built from rare letters can eat bulbs fast, even when you half know it. When a board looks short and strange, lean on the clue harder than the alphabet.
When you're stuck, go common. E, A, O and I cover a lot of ground, and R, S, T, N and L are the safest consonants. Save the J, Q, X and Z guesses for when the pattern practically spells them out for you.
Use the word lengths. A three-word answer with a short middle word is often a name or a title. A single ten-letter word gives you a lot to work with once two or three letters are in place.
The Wordsmith badge
Solve 25 puzzles without losing a bulb and you earn Wordsmith, worth 500 XP. A hint costs a bulb, so hinted solves don't count toward it. It builds up across every round you play, and it's one of the 60 badges in the app.
Will you see repeats?
Not for a long time. Every answer in the pool is different, and the game tracks what you've already played. Puzzles you've never seen come first. After that, the ones you missed come back before the ones you solved. There are 600 puzzles right now, which is 120 rounds of five, with more on the way.
If you quit partway through, the round isn't scored, but the puzzles you already played count as seen.
Where to find it
Update to version 1.6.0 on iPhone or Android, then tap the Spell It Out tile in the grid under Solo Play. The intro screen covers the rules once, and after your first round, Play Again takes you straight to the next puzzle.
Play Spell It Out
Free for everyone on iOS and Android. Update to Trend Trivia 1.6.0 and find it under Solo Play.
The other three free modes
- Fact or Fiction: read the statement and decide if it's real or made up.
- Ballpark: slide a ruler to your best guess at a number. Close counts.
- Clue by Clue: who am I? The earlier you call it, the more it's worth.