Loom
A crossword with no clues. Each block shows you its letters; work out which square each one goes in so every word across and down is real.
- Four levels: Easy to Extra Hard
- 2 techniques on its ladder
How Loom Works
The grid is divided by thick lines into blocks of two to five squares. Each block lists its letters in its top corner, and every one of those letters goes in one of that block's squares. When the board is full, every across and down run of three or more squares must spell a word, and exactly one arrangement of the letters does that.
As in a crossword, the words cross, so an across word can give you the letter you need for a down one. Tap a square and its block's letters appear beside it and below the board; tap one to place it, or drag it onto a square.
A run is checked the moment its last square fills. A run that is not a word costs a heart, and a notice says what it spells. A letter that has not finished a run costs nothing yet.
Every board is checked to have exactly one solution against a dictionary of about 80,000 words of 3 to 8 letters, and to be solvable with the two deductions below and no guessing. The words in the solution all come from a list of about 15,000 common words.
The Rules
- 1
Each Block's Letters Go in That Block
The thick lines mark the blocks. A block's letters are shown in its top corner, and every one belongs in one of that block's squares, never in another block. On Easy, Medium and Hard, one to three squares start filled in.
- 2
Every Word Has to Be a Real Word
Every across and down run of three or more squares must spell a word once it is full. Exactly one arrangement of the letters does that.
- 3
Tap a Square, Then a Letter
Tapping a square shows its block's letters on a small card beside it and below the board; tap one to place it, or drag it straight onto a square of its block. After a letter lands, the next square of the word you are writing is selected. To take a letter back out, tap its square and choose Remove.
- 4
A Wrong Word Costs a Heart
A run is checked the moment its last square fills. If it is not a word, it costs a heart, the run turns a warm colour, and the notice says what it spells. A letter that has not closed a run yet costs nothing. Hearts never run out in the daily set.
- 5
How Hints Help
First it points at any letters that cannot be part of the answer and offers to remove them. Then it finds a square with only one letter that fits, or a block with only one order that fits, and explains why from the words on the board. Hints alone can always finish the board.
The real screens.
Every picture on this page is the app itself, on a board from the game.
Where Loom Comes From
The crossword began with Arthur Wynne's Word-Cross, printed in the New York World on 21 December 1913: a diamond-shaped grid with numbered clues. The name was later swapped round to Cross-Word, and it stuck.
A crossword is two puzzles in one: the clues, and the way the answers lock together. Loom keeps only the second. Every letter is handed to you up front, listed in the corner of the block it goes in, and the words crossing that block are the only clue to where each one goes.
In Dayzle's version, every board is checked against the whole dictionary a player can spell from, not just the common words, so it has exactly one answer, and it can always be finished with two deductions: a square with one letter that fits, and a block with one order that fits.
How the Levels Differ
Easy is a 4×5 grid with blocks of 2 or 3 letters and 3 squares filled in for you. Medium is 5×6, with blocks of up to 4 letters and 2 squares filled in. Hard is 6×7, with blocks of up to 4 letters and 1 square filled in. Extra Hard is 7×8, with blocks of up to 5 letters and nothing filled in. That is 15 squares to fill on Easy and 44 on Extra Hard.
Each band is also built to need One Arrangement, the harder of the two deductions, a set number of times: at most once on Easy, at least once on Hard, and at least twice on Extra Hard. A block of five letters has up to 120 orders to weigh, against 6 for a block of three. The solution words also reach further down the common-word list as the band rises, from the most common 35% on Easy to the whole list on Extra Hard.
2 techniques, easiest first.
In Dayzle the hint and the solver are one engine, so these are the steps it takes to solve a Loom board, from the first you'll meet to the rarest. Open one for a worked example and a clip of the hint teaching it on a real board.
Only Fit Basic A square where only one of its block's letters lets the words through it still be spelled.
Take an empty square and try each letter its block still holds. For each one, read the across and down runs through the square: if no word could match what a run would then read, that letter cannot go there. When only one letter is left, it goes in.
Example: a square is the last letter of an across run reading S U _ and of a down run reading P I _, and its block still holds B, G and N. G would make the across run SUG, and B would make the down run PIB; neither is a word. N makes SUN and PIN, so N goes there.
The quickest places to find one are squares with letters around them already: the more letters its two runs hold, the fewer of the block's letters can fit.
One Arrangement Advanced A block where no single square is forced, but only one order of its letters makes real words.
When no square is down to one letter, look at a block with two or three squares still empty. Lay its letters into those squares in every order and read the runs through them. Every order but one leaves some run that no word matches, so the letters go in the one order that is left.
Example: a block's last two empty squares are the middle of an across run reading B _ _ T, and the block still holds A and O. Taken one at a time, neither square is forced: the first could be O (BOAT, BOOT) or A (BAIT), and the second could be A (BEAT) or O (BLOT). Together there are only two orders, BOAT and BAOT, and only BOAT is a word.
More word games.
Words
Tumbler
Turn one word into another, a letter at a time
Words
Witness
Rule out the suspects the clues contradict
Words
Amble
Words that wind through the grid and use every letter
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Cipher
Deduce the hidden word
Words
Word Search
Find the listed words hidden in a grid
Words
Forage
Build words from a bag of letters
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