Infinite Wordplay › Hard Mode

Hard Mode: Rules, Strategy and How to Turn It On

Hard mode is a second game hiding inside the first: the same word, but no room to fish for letters. Every clue you earn, you have to use.

The rules in two sentences

• Greens stay put. Once a letter turns green, it must be in that same spot in every later guess.
• Yellows get reused. Once a letter turns yellow, every later guess must contain it, anywhere you like.

Together they ban the move most strong players make in normal mode: spending a guess on a word that cannot be the answer, just to test new letters. In hard mode each guess has to be a real candidate. Break a rule and the game tells you why and lets you try again; the guess is not used up.

How to turn it on

Tap the Settings button (the gear) above the board and switch on Hard mode. The setting is saved in this browser and applies to every length, in both infinite and daily games. You cannot switch in the middle of a round, so the rules never change under you; they apply from the next word. Want to try it right away? Play five letters.

How the strategy changes

In normal mode, the classic second guess shares no letters with the first, so two guesses test ten different letters. Hard mode takes that away. Three habits make up for it:

• Make the opener count. Start with the most common letters (E, A, R, T, S, I, O). Every yellow you get narrows the field, and you will have to carry it anyway.
• Move yellows to new spots. Putting a yellow letter back where it was is allowed but wasted. Each guess should try it somewhere new.
• Beware word families. The famous trap is _IGHT or _ATCH: with four greens and six possible first letters, hard mode forces you to try them one at a time. When you see a family forming early, pick guesses that separate it before it is too late.

Hard mode with long words

At five letters hard mode is a mild squeeze; at eight and nine letters it changes the game. A yellow letter can go in seven or eight places, and the wrong spot costs a guess. That is one reason the long games give you seven guesses. All lengths support hard mode: 4 letters, 5 letters, 6 letters, 7 letters, 8 letters, 9 letters.

Your score and the star

Hard mode wins are counted on their own in your stats (the chart button), and your shared result carries a star: Infinite Wordplay Daily #12 · 5 letters · 4/6*. Anyone who plays word games knows what the star means: you did it the hard way.