Word Weigh

A new word game built on arithmetic

Most word games hide the numbers. This one puts them in the middle of the board. Each letter carries a weight equal to its position in the alphabet — A is 1, B is 2, and so on up to Z at 26 — and a level hands you a total. Your job is to find a five-letter word whose five weights add up to exactly that number.

That single change turns a vocabulary game into a search problem with a gradient. When you guess STONE and the board says 73 against a target of 86, you are not just wrong — you are thirteen short, and thirteen is a number you can act on.

The rules, in full

• Each level shows a target weight and a word length (five letters).
• Every letter is worth its alphabet position: A=1, B=2, C=3 … Z=26.
• Type any five-letter word. The board shows its weight and how far it is from the target.
• You get six guesses.
• Any word that hits the target exactly wins — the game does not have a preferred answer.
• From level three a second rule appears: no repeated letters, or must contain a vowel, or no double letters.

Why the weights are A=1 and not tile scores

If you have played a tile-based word game you will recognise a different scoring system, where Q and Z are worth a lot and E is worth almost nothing. Word Weigh deliberately does not use that. Here the weights are strictly positional, so the maths stays predictable: the lowest possible five-letter total is 5 (AAAAA, not a word) and the highest is 130.

It also means you can do the arithmetic in your head without memorising a table. If you know the alphabet, you know every weight. The only thing to learn is which letters are expensive: everything from R onwards is worth 18 or more, and the vowels are all cheap.

A worked example

The target is 86, five letters, no extra rule.

You try STONE: S=19, T=20, O=15, N=14, E=5. That is 73, thirteen under.

Thirteen is a useful number. It is roughly one expensive letter, so the fix is not to rearrange the word but to swap a cheap letter for a heavy one. Replace the E (5) with a Y (25) and you gain twenty — too much. Replace N (14) with an R (18) and you gain four.

QUERY gets there: Q=17, U=21, E=5, R=18, Y=25, which is exactly 86.

Notice what happened. You did not guess the answer; you closed a gap. That is the whole game.

Three habits that make you faster

Start with a balanced word, not a heavy one. A word with a mix of cheap vowels and mid-range consonants puts you near the middle of the range, which means your first delta is small and informative. Opening with a word full of rare letters overshoots and tells you less.

Read the delta as a letter, not a number. A gap of 3 to 6 is one letter swap. A gap of 10 to 20 is one expensive letter. A gap over 25 means you are in the wrong neighbourhood and should change the shape of the word entirely.

When the extra rule appears, use it as a filter. "No repeated letters" removes a huge slice of the space before you spend a guess. Check your candidate against the rule first, then against the weight — the rule is cheaper to check.

Daily and endless

Daily is one target a day, built from the date, so everyone playing today gets the same number. Endless keeps going and adds the second rule sooner, with the target chosen from a smaller set of solutions so the level is tighter.

Scoring is 100 points for a solve, minus 10 for each guess beyond the first, minus 40 for a hint, plus a streak bonus of up to 50. Everything is stored in your browser.

Why this works in a classroom

It is a spelling exercise and a mental arithmetic exercise at the same time, and neither half can be faked. A child who guesses words without adding gets a delta they cannot use; a child who adds without thinking about spelling produces nonsense. The two skills have to meet in the middle, which is exactly the point.

It also gives a teacher something rare: a word game where the answer can be checked by arithmetic rather than by memory. If the letters add up, the word is right, and the class can verify it without asking anyone.

Keep going

If you like games where the clues are facts rather than feedback, our word deduction game is the other half of the idea. The word games hub lists everything on the site, and the five-letter word list is useful when a target leaves you short of candidates.

Frequently asked questions

Is this game new?

Yes. The rules here are ours: every letter is worth its alphabet position rather than a tile score, and the target-and-delta loop was designed for this page. It is free, there is no sign-up, and it runs in the browser with nothing to install. Your level, score and streak are saved in local storage on your own device.

Do I need to memorise letter values?

No. Each weight is simply the letter's place in the alphabet, A is 1 and Z is 26, so you can count up from A whenever you are unsure. Most players soon learn the expensive end of the range, where R is 18 and the letters after it cost more. The board always prints the weight of your guess and the exact gap to the target, so the arithmetic is checked for you.

Can more than one word solve a level?

Yes, often. A level is only handed to you when at least one word of that weight satisfies the rule, and early levels are built to allow up to about twenty solutions. Any word that reaches the target and passes the rule wins, so the game never insists on one specific answer. Endless levels lower that cap as you climb, which makes each target rarer.

What do the extra rules mean?

In Endless, from level three, a level may add one rule on top of the weight: no repeated letters, it must contain a vowel, or no double letters. The rule is printed beside the target, and a guess that breaks it is called out in the feedback even when its weight is correct. A word only wins when the weight and the rule both pass, and some levels carry no extra rule at all.

How is the score calculated?

A solve is worth 100 points, minus 10 for each guess after the first, minus 40 if you used the hint, plus 10 for each level of your streak up to five. The total never falls below 20 points. A loss puts the streak back to zero, and your score and streak stay in local storage between visits.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The layout is a single column that narrows cleanly, and the guess field takes only five characters, capitalising them and dropping anything that is not A to Z as you type. Buttons wrap onto a new line when space is tight, so nothing is pushed off the edge. The hint button sits beside the Weigh it button, and Share result appears in the same card when a level ends.