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WordChess

A wide-open 25×25 board where every tile you place is a small act of strategy.

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How to play

Build words by placing letter tiles from your rack onto a large 25×25 grid. Each new word has to connect to tiles already on the board, and special squares scattered across the grid multiply letter or word values, so where you play matters as much as what you play. Score the most points by the end of the game to win.

Controls
Game modes
Tips & strategy
Board squares

Premium squares scattered across the grid multiply your score, land letters on them to make a play pay off:

About WordChess

WordChess is an original tile-laying word strategy game built in-house. It reimagines crossword-style word building on an extra-large grid with smart AI opponents, pass-and-play, and online matches, free to play in your browser.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.

Food for Thought
  1. How a computer picks a word

    Before the AI plays, it must find its move inside a haystack of a hundred and fifty thousand words, and then stop looking.

  2. Teaching a machine 149,000 words, in 22 languages

    A word game needs more than a list of legal strings. It needs to say what each one means, and meaning is the hardest thing to store.

  3. The Game With No Bad Draws

    Take the bag away from a word game and something disappears with it, the alibi, the miracle, and the whole drama of luck.

  4. The Mathematics of a Letter

    Q is worth ten points and E is worth one. That single fact hides a small theory of language, an argument about information, and a reason the game's tile bag looks different in Spanish than in English.

  5. A Combinatorial Ocean

    Chess is our benchmark for depth. A quiet design choice makes WordChess deeper still.