HOW TO PLAY

THE IDEA

Every picture reads as a word or a part of one. A picture of an ant is ANT, and ANT is also the end of WANT. The whole game rests on that single idea.

PIXAWIZARD

You see a word with an empty slot. Pick the picture that belongs there. Any real word you make counts — if two pictures fit, both are right. The full word appears once you get it right.

PIXACHASER

The other way round: you get a picture and eight words. Find the one word that hides it.

PIXAGRAM

Two pictures are missing and the order matters. HAIR and MAN make CHAIRMAN; the other way round, nothing. Your picks drop into the empty slots left to right, so the order is visible inside the word. Another real word from the same pictures counts too.

PIXABUILDER

The hardest of the four: the word is never shown. You only know how many stones it takes, and you build it from pictures and a few letters. Any word from the game's dictionary you can build counts — even a shorter one. Confirm the row with the button — until then you can take stones back.

TIME, POINTS, COMBO

A timed run starts at thirty seconds. A correct word is a hundred points and three seconds more. A mistake costs fifty points and breaks your combo, but no time. The clock only runs while you hold stones and guess — it stops while the solved word is shown.

Solve the next word within four seconds and the combo doubles the points. Zen is the same game without the clock: your own pace, but the result stays out of the leaderboard.

HINTS

You have three hints. Each reveals one correct stone or removes four wrong choices. A run with a hint finishes normally, it just does not enter the leaderboard — otherwise there would be nothing to compare.

PIXADUEL

A duel is two players and ten rounds. Either you both race on the same word and the faster one takes the round, or you take turns and whoever misses lets the other steal the word. A round is a hundred points; a wrong answer costs no points, it just locks you out of that round. There are no hints in a duel — three hints against an opponent who has none is not a game.

Invite someone with a link or a code — send it by text, WhatsApp or email and your friend taps it and sits down. Or let the game find a stranger. With someone you invited you can also type; against a stranger only the preset lines go through.

Leave a duel and you lose it. Points from a win like that count nowhere, though — the other player did not win it by playing.

TOURNAMENT

The tournament runs for a month and has a table of its own. The conditions are the same for everyone and are not chosen: same mode, same thirty seconds per turn, same word difficulty, and one game per day that rotates. A month gets you all four.

Opponents are matched by points: whoever is winning meets someone who is winning. Otherwise a beginner would meet the best player in the first round and leave, and the best player would walk through ten duels — and both would stop playing.

Your best ten duels count, and at most two against the same opponent. Rematches are allowed, but nobody can inflate the table with one friend. Tournament points also go into the overall leaderboard, doubled.

You have to sign up for the tournament and give your consent: you play against people you do not know, and your name is visible to every player in the table. From ten players up the season hands out medals to the first three.

BADGES

Medals go to the first three of a tournament season. Badges for deeds can be earned without a tournament: LIGHTNING for winning on the ten-second turn, CLEAN GAME for a win without a single wrong answer, STREAK for five wins in a row and REGULAR for playing duels on seven different days.

Only the most valuable one is carried next to your name in a table — eight icons beside a name is clutter. You find all of yours in PROGRESS. A badge is never taken away: what you did once, you did.

DIFFICULTY

BASIC reads the picture literally. PRO allows a wider but fair meaning. INSANE works with metaphor, stereotype or homonym. You switch it in the menu, not before every game.