Cipher
Guess the hidden word. Each guess tells you which of its letters are in the word and which are already in the right place.
- Four levels: Easy to Extra Hard
How Cipher Works
Cipher hides one word. You type a real word of the same length, and each of its letters comes back marked one of three ways: in the word and in the right place, in the word but somewhere else, or not in the word at all. The on-screen keyboard keeps track of every letter you have learned about.
The rows on the board are your guesses: 7 on Easy, 6 on Medium and Hard, and 5 on Extra Hard, or 6 when an Extra Hard word has four letters. Find the word within them and you win. Use them all and the board is lost, and the answer is shown.
The answer is always a common word, but a guess can be any word the dictionary accepts: about 4,700 five-letter words, or about 3,900 four-letter words on a four-letter board. An unusual word is still useful for testing letters. A guess that is not in the dictionary is turned away without using up a row.
A wrong guess is how the game is played, so it does not count as a mistake. Your score counts a mistake only when a guess ignores what the board already told you, such as a guess that uses three letters already shown not to be in the word.
The Rules
- 1
Guess the Word
Enter a real word of the board's width: five letters, or four on some of the hardest boards. Each guess gives you feedback to work from.
- 2
Valid Words Only
A guess must be a real word from the dictionary. A word that is not in it is turned away and does not use up a guess.
- 3
Read the Tiles
Each tile shows how close its letter is: the right letter in the right place, the right letter in the wrong place, or a letter that is not in the word.
- 4
Guesses Run Out
The rows on the board are your guesses. Use them all without finding the word and the game ends, and the word is shown.
- 5
Three Ruled-Out Letters Is a Mistake
A wrong guess never costs a heart, but your score counts some guesses as mistakes. One is a guess with three or more letters the board already ruled out: a letter shown not to be in the word, or a letter put back on a square where it was shown to be in the wrong place.
- 6
Keep the Letters You Have Found
A guess with three or more letters you have not tried yet never counts as a mistake. Any other guess is a mistake if it does not keep every letter already found in its right place, or leaves out a letter you know is in the word.
The real screens.
Every picture on this page is the app itself, on a board from the game.
Where Cipher Comes From
Working out a hidden code from partial answers is an old pencil-and-paper game. The best-known version is Bulls and Cows: one player writes down a secret four-digit number with no digit repeated, the other guesses, and each guess is answered only with a count of digits that are right and in the right place (bulls) and digits that are right but in the wrong place (cows). Who invented it is not known.
Another version of the game swaps the digits for letters that spell a five-letter word. Cipher is that version for one player: the app sets the word, and each letter of your guess is marked on its own tile, where Bulls and Cows gives only the two counts.
How the Levels Differ
Every band's answer is a common word. What changes is how hard its letters make it to pin down, and how many guesses you get. Easy gives 7 guesses and one of the 500 most familiar five-letter words, each with five different letters and no unusual letter pairs. Medium gives 6 guesses and a word from the next 500 by familiarity, under the same letter rules. Hard gives 6 guesses and one of 418 words that repeat a letter or use an unusual pair of letters.
Extra Hard gives 5 guesses and one of 580 words picked for being hard to deduce: doubled letters, as in APPLE, QUEUE, KAYAK and VIVID, and words one letter away from several others, like LATCH, BATCH and CATCH. Half of its answers are four letters long. A four-letter word has about six common words one letter away from it, against about two for a five-letter word, so those boards get a 6th guess.
How a board gets harder.
Cipher has one skill — using each guess's tiles to narrow down the word — so its hints reveal letters instead of naming a technique. The first hints name a letter that is in the word; once you know every letter, a hint says where one goes; after that it can type the answer into your row. Every hint shows you what it will do before anything changes. A harder board is harder because of the answer and the budget: from 7 guesses on Easy down to 5 on Extra Hard (6 when the word has four letters), and from five different letters to repeated letters, unusual letter pairs and four-letter words, which leave more words still possible after each guess.
More word games.
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Turn one word into another, a letter at a time
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Build words from a bag of letters
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Loom
A crossword with no clues — place each block's letters
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Word Search
Find the listed words hidden in a grid
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Beacon
Watch the words light up, tap them back in order
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Witness
Rule out the suspects the clues contradict
Today's five are waiting.
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