What is Letterphile?
Letterphile asks how much one letter can do. Its board already contains scattered letters, and your move is to place one new tile in an empty square. The game scores valid words completed by that placement, including words that cross through it in different directions.
Daily mode presents five shared 10×10 boards against a timer. It favors spotting a productive intersection quickly, rather than building a single long word over many turns. The site also has separate play against an AI opponent; the daily sequence is its own mode.
Words in several directions
Check across, down, and diagonally. Words can run forward or backward, which makes an apparently unhelpful cluster worth examining from the other end.
Word length supplies the basic points, while completing multiple words creates a scoring combination. The tutorial's example combines a four-letter word with a three-letter word: 4 + (3 × 2) = 10. In that two-word combination, the smaller word receives the multiplier.
A word and its inflections cannot repeatedly earn points in the same game. Do not assume extending an already used word with an ending will produce a fresh score.
How to play
- Open Letterphile and select the Daily mode.
- Scan the prefilled board for empty squares where two or more promising letter runs meet.
- Choose a letter that would complete valid words through one of those squares.
- Select the square and letter, or drag a letter directly into place, before the timer runs out.
- Review the scoring and work through the full five-board daily sequence.
Look for intersections
As an illustrative pattern, an empty square might sit between H _ T horizontally and C _ P vertically. Placing A could complete both HAT and CAP if those are the complete letter runs on the board.
Check a candidate square's diagonals as well before deciding. A modest word in several directions can be more valuable than a longer word that uses only one line. The useful question is not just “What can I spell?” but “What does this one placement complete?”