How do you play Word Wheel?
Word Wheel gives you nine letters: eight around the rim and one in the middle. Make as many words as you can of 4 letters or more. Every word must use the middle letter, and each tile can be used only once in a word. Somewhere in the wheel is one word that uses all nine letters. Tap the tiles or type, then press Enter.
Choose 1, 2 or 3 minutes. The clock counts down, and when it reaches zero the game ends. Shuffle turns the outer letters around, which often shows you a word you hadn't seen. The game is also called a word circle or letter wheel.
How is your Word Wheel result calculated?
Your result is the number of words you found before time ran out. Next to it are your longest word and whether you found the nine-letter word, and afterwards the page lists the common words you could have made. There are no points: every word counts as one, so the number means exactly what it says.
Scores depend a lot on the wheel. Some have many short common words, some few, so compare results over several wheels. Typing on a keyboard is quicker than tapping tiles on a phone, which matters with the clock running.
Where do the Word Wheel words come from?
A word counts if it is in ENABLE, a public-domain word list made for word games, so a real word is never turned down. Proper names, abbreviations and a short list of slurs and rude words are left out. The words shown at the end are only the common ones: those in SCOWL's smaller sizes, a list built for spell checkers by Kevin Atkinson and used under its free licence. That keeps the list of missed words to words you would know.
There are 30 wheels, each made from a common nine-letter word, with the middle letter chosen so the wheel has between 19 and 44 common words to find. The site's tests check that every listed word can really be made from its wheel.
How do you find more words?
- Start short. Four- and five-letter words come fastest; build longer ones from them by adding a letter or an ending.
- Use endings and beginnings. Look for -ING, -ED, -ER and -S at the end, and RE- or UN- at the start. The nine-letter word often ends in one of them.
- Keep the middle letter in mind. Try it in every position: first, last and inside the word.
- Shuffle when you get stuck. A new order of letters breaks the patterns your eye has settled on.
Is there always a nine-letter word?
Yes. Every wheel is made from one, with its letters shuffled. Finding it isn't required, but it is the longest word you can make, and the result says whether you found it. If you don't, the page shows it at the end.
For a single scrambled word at a time, try the Word Scramble; for changing one letter at a time, the Word Ladder.