A word game where you can build on top of what is already there. Stack a letter over another letter to change a word into a different one.
You against the bot, one rack each, with every word checked against the dictionary as you play.
Drag a tile from your rack onto the board, or tap a tile and then tap the square you want. Tiles you have not submitted can be moved again.
Words read across or down and have to connect to what is already on the board, as in any crossword game.
The difference is stacking. You can place a tile on top of another one to change a word, as long as the result is still a word and you never stack more than five high.
Points come from the height of the stacks you make, so a two high stack across a long word is worth more than a flat word of the same length. Submit when you are happy, or pass if you are stuck.
A flat word scores two points per letter. Once a word has a stack in it, it scores one point per tile in the whole column, which is what makes building upward worth doing.
No. You cannot completely bury an existing word, and you cannot make a letter repeat itself by stacking the same letter on top.
Against the same dictionary the rest of the site uses, checked the moment you submit, so an invalid word is handed straight back to you.
It plays real words from the same dictionary, looks for the best scoring move it can find on its rack, and passes when it genuinely has nothing.
Upwords is the three dimensional cousin of the crossword tile game. The board never really fills up, because every square can be built on, which keeps a game alive long after a flat board would have stalled.
The strategy is different too. Short words in the right place beat long words in the wrong one, because a stack you can build on later is worth more than a row you have used up.
Letters are dealt from the same distribution every game, so a rack of vowels is bad luck rather than bad design.