Build words from a clock face of letters while a sweeping hand steals one tile every couple of seconds.
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How to play
The letters sit around a clock face, and a single hand sweeps steadily around it. Each tick the hand moves on one position and takes whatever letter is sitting there, refilling that slot from the pool. You score by submitting real words built from the letters currently on the ring — so every letter you are planning around is on a countdown.
Only letters presently on the ring can be used.
The hand advances one slot per tick and removes the letter it lands on.
The emptied slot refills immediately, so the ring never shrinks — it churns.
A word must be submitted before the hand takes any letter it needs.
Longer words score more but take longer to spot and to type.
Controls
Desktop: click hour-tiles to build a word (or type letters on the keyboard), Enter to submit, Backspace to undo a tile, Esc to clear. Buttons cover Back, Clear, Hint and Pause.
Phone & tablet: tap the tiles to build words and tap Enter; a physical keyboard or mouse is recommended for the fastest play.
Tips & strategy
Play the letters just behind the hand. They have a full sweep before they are in danger, while the ones just ahead of it may not survive your typing.
Take the short word now rather than the long word you might finish. A seven-letter word that loses one letter mid-sweep scores nothing at all.
Watch the hand, not the letters. Knowing which slot is next tells you which good letter is about to disappear.
Rare letters are worth building around only if the hand has just passed them.
The ring refills constantly, so a bad ring is temporary — skipping a sweep to wait for better letters is a legitimate move.
Origins
Building words from a shifting pool of letters is anagram play, and the timed hunt through a small shared set is Boggle's, from 1973.
The original mechanism is the clock. Letters sit around a dial and a sweeping hand takes whatever it passes, refilling the slot from the pool.
That gives every letter a visible expiry. Boggle's pressure is a single timer on the whole round; here the pressure is per-tile and readable in advance, so the skill becomes choosing which word to take now because its letters will not survive the next revolution.
About Scramble Siege
Scramble Siege is an original free browser word game that turns anagram-hunting into a race against a moving clock hand, with a seeded Daily puzzle and an endless Practice mode.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
