What is Slate Pears?
Pears is Slate's daily word-building game. You begin with a ring of letters and make words from the available set. The twist arrives in the form of a pear containing a pair of letters: use that pair in a word to improve your scoring multiplier.
It is a vocabulary and timing challenge. Finding a valid word is useful, but choosing when to spend a particularly long word can matter more once a pear is in play.
The one-word pear twist
The official tutorial introduces the first pear after four words. You then need to find one word using its letter pair. Each pear gives you only one shot at that scoring opportunity, and a longer pear word produces a better multiplier.
Finish all the pears to complete the game. Keep an eye on what is currently available in the ring and what the active pear requires, rather than treating the entire puzzle as an unrestricted anagram list.
How to play
- Open the current Pears puzzle and choose Begin game. The introductory tutorial explains the ring and pear sequence.
- Make words from the displayed letters and submit them using the game's controls.
- When a pear appears, identify its two letters and look for a word that uses the pair.
- Compare your plausible pear words before submitting: a longer accepted word improves the multiplier, and that pear has only one scoring opportunity.
- Continue through the remaining pears and review your final score.
A useful decision pattern
Imagine that, for the active pair and the letters actually available, you can see both a short valid word and a longer one. The longer option is worth investigating before you submit the short word, because you cannot keep trying different scoring words on that same pear.
This is a planning example, not a claim that any particular letters or answer appear today. The displayed ring and the game's dictionary decide which candidates are legal.
When the next puzzle arrives
Slate releases a new Pears game daily at noon Eastern time. An account lets you save progress and maintain a streak; access to the full archive is a Slate Plus feature. You can begin the current game from its main page.