Ten Tangle: daily word scramble

A wrong answer leaves you on the same word, with a note saying whether the letters did not match or the word is not in the list. The words run from shortest to longest, so the round warms up before the hard ones. A skipped word is shown at the end, and the summary lists every answer with the seconds it took.

The target is built from the words themselves: 10 seconds for each four-letter word, 14 for five letters, 18 for six and 24 for seven. With the same mix of lengths every day, the target is always 2:44. It is set to be reachable with steady play rather than to reward only the fastest typists, and your personal best is kept alongside it.

Your final time is the clock reading when the last word is done, and it already includes every penalty taken along the way. A wrong answer adds no penalty of its own: the clock simply keeps running while you try again, so it costs only the seconds spent on it.

A hint costs 10 seconds and a skip 30, so a word that one or two hints would crack is cheaper to finish than to skip. A hinted word still counts as solved once you type it in, while a skipped word is shown at the end as missed.

The two records in your statistics treat a skip differently. A daily round counts as under the target whenever its final time is at or below the target, skips included, because only the time is compared. The best time comes only from a daily puzzle with all ten words solved, so a single skip keeps that round out of it. Replaying a day you have already finished changes neither record, and missing a day starts the streak again from one.

The daily set is worked out in your browser from the date and the word list, with no server choosing it. So every player in the same language sees the same words in the same scrambled order. A new puzzle starts at midnight in your own time zone, which in the UK means midnight GMT in winter and BST in summer. After finishing, the share button copies a short line with your time and the number of words solved. It holds no answers, so it spoils nothing for friends who have not played yet.

Unlimited mode deals a new random set of ten every time you ask, with the same target and rules, for practice or when one round a day is not enough. The archive lets you pick any earlier date since the game began and play that day's exact puzzle, which is handy for catching up after a few days away. Neither unlimited games nor archive days change your streak, which belongs to the daily puzzle alone.

The game keeps a small record of your daily results: games played, rounds under the target and your current streak of consecutive days. It also keeps your longest streak and your best time for a fully solved puzzle. It is stored only in your browser's local storage on this device, so there is no account and nothing is sent to us. Clearing the site's data in your browser, or playing in a private window, starts the record afresh, and a second device keeps its own.

Speed comes mostly from spotting familiar letter patterns quickly, and these habits are the ones most players lean on.

• Look for common endings first: ING, ED, ER, LY and TION rebuild many longer words from the back.
• Pair letters that often travel together, such as TH, CH, SH, QU and CK, before placing the rest.
• Split vowels and consonants in your head; most English words alternate between them.
• Use the shuffle button when you are stuck, since a new order often shows a pattern the first one hid.
• Say possible words under your breath; hearing them is quicker than reading every order.

Regular players of the Countdown letters round will recognise the habit of spotting endings and prefixes first. Like any daily word puzzle, it also rewards a wide vocabulary and careful spelling. The word grid game trains the same eye for letter patterns on one shared grid a day.

The answers are drawn from a pool of 3,600 everyday English words, chosen from open word lists by how often they appear in film and television subtitles (FrequencyWords). Only base forms are used, so the answer is more likely to be RUN than RUNS. The very commonest words, such as THE or AND, are left out because they are no puzzle, and names, abbreviations and offensive words are filtered out as well. A scramble never shows the answer in its own order, or another answer from the pool.