How to play LexiTales
1 · Your tiles
You get 7 letter tiles on your rack. Each tile shows its letter and its point value (small number). Letters that turn up in lots of our words, like E, A and R, are worth 1; rare ones like Q and Z are worth 10. Your first rack always has a word in it.
Two of the 100 tiles are Wilds ★. A Wild can be any letter you name, and it is worth 0. It goes in a word whose meaning you show when you lay it, and it stays on the board in lighter ink, so everyone can see it was a gift.
Stuck with letters that won't make a word? 🔄 Swap tiles: put some back, draw new ones. It uses your turn, and the game tells you what was left in the bag.
2 · Build a word
Tap a tile, then tap an empty square to place it. Your tiles must line up in a single row or column and spell a real word (2+ letters). The first word must cross the ⭐ centre square.
3 · Connect and cross
After the first word, every new word must touch a word already on the board — either sharing a tile or forming a new crossing word. Every word you make (down and across) has to be real. Little linking words like AN, TO, or ON are your best friends.
4 · Premium squares
Some squares give bonuses when you cover them with a fresh tile:
5 · Score
Add up your tiles' values (with any letter bonuses), then multiply by any word bonus. Lay 5 or 6 tiles in one word for a +20 long-word bonus, or all 7 for +35. The player with the most points when the tiles run out wins.
Where the numbers come from
In 1938 Alfred Butts counted the letters in newspaper pages to decide what each tile was worth and how many of each go in the bag. We did the same with the only "page" these tiles ever spell: our own list of 2,880 words. A letter that shows up in lots of those words is cheap; a rare one is dear. We made two small choices of our own: C pays 2 so the trickiest common consonant still earns a little, and U stays at 1. The bag also keeps enough vowels to make words, and every letter has at least one tile.
| Letter | Share of our words | Worth | Tiles |
|---|---|---|---|
| E | 12.2 % | 1 | 14 |
| A | 8.4 % | 1 | 9 |
| R | 7.7 % | 1 | 6 |
| T | 7.2 % | 1 | 6 |
| O | 6.9 % | 1 | 8 |
| I | 5.9 % | 1 | 7 |
| L | 5.8 % | 1 | 5 |
| N | 5.7 % | 1 | 5 |
| S | 5.5 % | 1 | 5 |
| C | 4.0 % | 2 | 3 |
| D | 3.6 % | 2 | 3 |
| P | 3.5 % | 2 | 3 |
| U | 3.3 % | 1 | 4 |
| H | 3.1 % | 3 | 2 |
| M | 2.7 % | 3 | 2 |
| G | 2.4 % | 3 | 2 |
| B | 2.2 % | 4 | 2 |
| F | 2.0 % | 4 | 2 |
| W | 2.0 % | 4 | 2 |
| Y | 1.9 % | 4 | 2 |
| K | 1.5 % | 4 | 1 |
| V | 1.2 % | 5 | 1 |
| X | 0.3 % | 8 | 1 |
| J | 0.3 % | 8 | 1 |
| Z | 0.3 % | 10 | 1 |
| Q | 0.2 % | 10 | 1 |
6 · The bot
Playing solo? The bot plays a real game and you can pick its level — Easy, Standard, or Hard. It makes human-like choices (not a perfect robot), so it's a fair, beatable opponent while you learn.