We wrote a lot of blog posts about how the Smartle daily word puzzle works but I don’t think we ever showed a real example of what we mean when we say that a Smartle puzzle has more than one correct solution. Today I would like to show exactly that. There is nothing magical in it and no special skill is needed. It is just what I do to get a different result: I just start the game with a different word.
Game one: starting with PARIS
So here is today’s word game. And I saw the word “Paris” on the board first so I decided to start with it. I swapped the letters to form it and then from the remaining letters I tried to build more and more words until the whole puzzle was solved.
To be honest, I did not know all the words in today’s word puzzle solution. On my own I created only three words. Paris was my first word. Then I created “foley” and “curvy”. After that I was left with two unsolved rows so I was going either to use a hint or to just start randomly swapping letters to form something that might sound like a word to me. And after a few swaps, I got the name “fauls” correctly. Then I checked word definitions in “Found words archive” to learn that it is indeed a word and indeed a name of the village in England, so I learned something new.
Then only one row was left and I did exactly the same tactics again. I kept swapping letters to see if something would relatively remind me of a word, and quite fast I was lucky and formed “cubeb”, which is the tailed pepper apparently. So I learned two new words in one daily word game and both of them could be handy in my future games of daily word puzzles. I’m just hopeful that I won’t forget them till the next game tomorrow.
Game two: same day, starting with CABLE
Now let me show you how the exact same daily word puzzle for the exact same date can be solved in a completely different way. I opened another browser where I don’t have my Smartle account. Usually I play as Spectacular Hamster and all my stats are saved under that name and this time I was given Cuddly Seal which I don’t mind at all.
So I got the same puzzle but this time I started with a different word, and the word that came to my mind was “cable”. From there I formed words “fiery” and “lupus”. And again, to win this daily word puzzle, I needed to form two more words.
I know I could use hints. I have three free hints per day, which is more than enough when only two words are missing. I could use them and still have one hint unused. But I don’t like to use hints when I play my own word puzzle games. So I started swapping again, and soon I got “favus”. It sounded interesting to me and I assumed it was related to doing someone a favour or being a favourite but it appeared that it is a chronic ringworm infection. I was quite surprised with it. It is a very unusual word and I don’t think I ever encountered this in my life ever, just because ringworms is not my favourite topic.
And then the last word I formed exactly the same way. It was “corby” which I was sure was a person’s name. And I think I even met someone called Corby but apparently it is a town in England. Who knows, maybe one day I will visit Corby and see it with my own eyes.
So the first word decides everything
So I played two games, the same 25 letters, same date and in their solutions not a single word was repeated. That’s the thing that I love about Smartle word puzzle - there is not one hidden answer that you must find. Puzzle has many solutions - much more than two and the one you end up with depends mostly on which word you decide to build first.
Maybe swapping letters until something looks like a word is a bit naive as a strategy. But I like it, because I start from the words that I know and then I learn a new word or two every day when playing a new daily word puzzle.
This is what I wanted to show and to demonstrate to you: just how I solve my own free word puzzles. It is for sure not a perfect way to solve it, but I’m also not a native speaker and I’m still learning English. I’m still very happy when I get a chance to learn or use a new word. And I hope that it might be inspiring for someone to see how I play this word game, and I would also be curious to know how you play it and what your best strategies are.