How to play

Guess the hidden 5-letter word in 6 tries. After each guess, the tiles tell you how close you were — and when the game ends, BrainBreak shows you what the word means.

Reading the tiles

R is in the word and in the right place.
A is in the word but somewhere else. E is in the right place.
None of these letters appear in the word.

Colour is never the only signal. Turn on high contrast in Settings to add a mark to every tile, or switch to the colour-blind palette.

Repeated letters

A letter only lights up as many times as it actually appears. If the answer holds one E and you guess two, only one of them will show as found — the other stays grey even though the letter is in the word.

Daily and practice

Everyone gets the same Daily word, and a new one arrives at midnight your time. Solving it keeps your streak going. Practice is unlimited and never affects your daily result — play as many as you like, or none at all.

Hard mode

With hard mode on, every hint you have uncovered must be reused in later guesses. A green letter has to stay in its place, and a letter you know is in the word has to appear again.

The part that isn't guessing

Win or lose, the game ends with the word's meaning, its part of speech and a sentence that uses it properly. Losing a puzzle still leaves you a word you didn't have before.

Play today's word

And the other game: 2048

Swipe the board — or press the arrow keys — and every tile slides as far as it can go. Two tiles showing the same number join into one showing their sum, and a new tile appears after each move. Reach 2048 to win, then keep going as long as something can move.

The ladder

Colour is how you read your progress at a glance: cool and quiet at the start, hot through the middle, and green at 2048 — the same green a correct letter gets in the word game.

2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024
2048

Two rules that decide most games

A tile joins at most once per move. A row of four 2s becomes two 4s, never an 8 — which is why pressing the same direction twice is not the same as pressing it once.
Pressing into a wall when nothing can move does nothing at all. No new tile appears, so you can never lose the board by testing a direction.

Play 2048

Quartets

Find the four hidden connections among sixteen words. The obvious grouping is usually the trap.

Sixteen words. Four hidden connections, 4 words each. Pick 4 words you think belong together and submit them.

Get the group exactly right and it locks to the top of the board with its connection shown. Get it wrong and you spend one of your 4 mistakes — though if three of your 4 were in the same group, you are told so once.

The groups get harder

Colour tells you which one you found, from the most straightforward to the one that was hiding.

The one you see first
A little less obvious
Takes a moment
The one doing the hiding

Worth knowing

Almost every puzzle has at least one word that looks like it belongs somewhere it does not. That is the puzzle.
Re-submitting 4 words you have already tried costs you nothing — you are told, and the mistake does not count.
Shuffle only moves the words about. It never changes which group they are in, and it can be a genuine help when a false grouping has got stuck in your eye.
Run out of mistakes and all 4 connections are revealed anyway, with a note on each. You leave knowing them either way.

Keyboard

Arrow keys move around the grid.
Space picks a word up or puts it back.
Enter submits once 4 are picked.

Play quartets

Sudoku

The classic number-placement puzzle, in four difficulties, with pencil marks and a daily grid everyone gets the same.

Fill the grid so that every row, every column and every three-by-three box contains each digit from 1 to 9 exactly once. The squares you start with never change; everything else is yours to work out.

You never have to guess

Every grid here has exactly one answer, and every one of them can be finished by reasoning — that is checked before a board is ever dealt. If you are stuck, there is something on the board to see.

The two moves that solve most of it

Only one digit fits. Look at one empty square and rule out everything already in its row, its column and its box. When eight digits are gone, the ninth is the answer.
Only one square is left. Turn it around: pick a digit and a box, and ask where in that box it could possibly go. If there is one square left, it goes there — even if that square could have held four other digits too.

The controls

Tap a square, then a digit. Tapping the same digit again takes it back out.
Notes puts digits in small, as pencil marks. Press it twice to fill every empty square with everything still possible there — and placing a digit tidies the marks it rules out.
Hint fills in the next square that logic can reach, rather than a square picked at random. It is the one you were about to find.
On a keyboard: arrow keys or WASD to move, 1–9 to place, 0 or backspace to clear, N for notes, U to undo, H for a hint, P to pause.

Mistakes, and the clock

A wrong digit is marked and counted, and that is all it does. There is no limit and nothing to lose — you can always take it back out. The clock is there because a time is satisfying to beat, and it pauses whenever you leave, so a grid you walk away from is not spoiled.

The four grids, and the daily

Easy and Medium ask you to look at one square, or one digit, at a time. Hard and Expert need you to hold two or three squares in mind together — where a digit cannot go is as useful as where it can. The daily grid is the same for everybody, and it climbs through the week: gentle on Monday, the real thing on Sunday.

Play sudoku

Minesweeper

Deduce where the mines are from the numbers around them. Every board here is solvable by reasoning alone.

Somewhere under the board are the mines. Open a cell and it tells you how many of the eight cells touching it are mined — open one with none nearby and the whole clear patch around it opens with it. Open every cell that is not a mine and the board is done.

Flag a cell to say you have worked out a mine is there. Flags are notes to yourself: they never open anything and the board never checks them — but they are what makes the next move possible.

You are never asked to guess

Every board here is checked before you see it: the numbers alone are always enough to finish it, all the way to the last cell. If you are stuck, there is something to work out — which is a much better place to be than one move from a coin flip.

The first cell you open is always safe, and always opens a patch rather than a single digit. That is not luck either.

The numbers

Each has its own colour, so a board reads at a glance — but the digit is always the information, never the colour.

The move worth learning

Press a number you have already opened once its flags add up to it, and every other cell around it opens at once. It is called chording, it is most of the speed in this game — and it acts on your flags, so a flag in the wrong place opens a mine.

Controls

On a phone: Tap to open, hold to flag — or switch the Dig / Flag control and tap either way. Tap an opened number to chord.
With a mouse: Left click opens, right click flags, middle click or both buttons together chords.
From the keyboard: Arrow keys or WASD move around the board, Enter or Space opens, F flags and C chords.

The three boards

Small — 9 by 9, 10 mines
Medium — 12 by 12, 22 mines
Large — 16 by 16, 40 mines

Each keeps its own board and its own best time, so moving between them never costs you a game in progress.

Play minesweeper

Nonogram

Fill the squares the row and column clues describe, and a picture appears. Logic with a reward you can look at.

The numbers beside each row and above each column say how many squares in a row are filled, in order, with at least one gap between them. Fill the squares they describe and a picture appears.

One line, worked out

A clue of 3 in five squares can start in three places — but whichever it is, the middle square is covered every time. So it can be filled without guessing, and that one square is usually enough to settle the rest.

Every picture here can be finished this way, one line at a time. You are never asked to guess.

Crossing squares out

A cross means “this one is definitely empty”. It is how you keep track of what you have already ruled out, and it is worth doing — but it is only working, never scored. The picture is finished when the right squares are filled, crosses or no crosses.

Playing it

Press and drag to fill a whole run in one go. The first square you touch decides whether the run fills or erases, and the drag keeps to the row or column you start along.
Use the fill / cross toggle to switch what a drag does — or right-click, on a mouse.
A clue dims once its line adds up, so you can see at a glance what is left.
On a keyboard: arrows move, Space fills, X crosses out, Shift and an arrow paints as it moves, U undoes and H asks for a hint.

Getting it wrong

Nothing happens. A square in the wrong place is just a square in the wrong place — there is no life to lose and the board is never taken away. Check when you want to know, and it will point at the ones that do not belong. If you would rather be told the moment it happens, turn on strict in the controls and a wrong square simply will not go in.

Play nonogram

Word search

Find every hidden word in the grid — forwards, backwards, up, down and diagonally. A quiet one, for when you want to think without being tested.

Every word in the list is hidden somewhere in the grid. Press the first letter and drag to the last — or tap the first letter, then tap the last, which is easier on a phone for a long word.

Words run in all eight directions: across, down, diagonally, and any of those backwards. That is most of the difficulty, and the filler letters are drawn from the same letters the answers use, so you cannot find them by looking for the odd ones out.

Nothing to lose

A selection that spells nothing simply clears. There is no penalty, no limit on attempts and no cost to the clock — try anything you like. If you are properly stuck, a hint lights up the first letter of a word you have not found yet.

Two ways to play

Daily — one themed grid, the same for everyone, with a new one at midnight. Finishing it on consecutive days builds a streak.
Free play — a fresh theme whenever you want one, in three sizes: 8 by 8, 11 by 11, or 14 by 14.

With a keyboard

Tab to the grid, move with the arrow keys, press Enter on the first letter and Enter again on the last. Escape cancels a selection.

Play word search

Echo

A sequence that grows by one every round. Pure working memory — and each pad has its own note, so the pattern is a tune.

4 pads light up in a pattern. Play the pattern back. Each round adds one more step, and it keeps going until you miss one.

Press the pads, press the number keys 1 to 4, or use the arrow keys — up and right for the top and right-hand pads, down and left for the bottom and left-hand ones. Pressing while the pattern is still playing does nothing at all; it is never counted against you.

Every pad is a note

The four pads are four notes of one scale, so a pattern is a short tune. Most people find they remember the tune long before they remember the positions — which is the point, and the reason it is worth playing with the sound on.

One slip is free

Get one wrong and the same pattern simply plays again — once per game. A second mistake ends it. Turn on Strict before you start if you would rather the first mistake counted.

Two things worth knowing

The pattern speeds up as it grows, but only to a point. Past round 18 the tempo stops changing — the pattern is the difficulty, not your reaction time.
A pad can repeat. Two of the same in a row is a real part of the pattern, and it is the one most people drop.

Play echo

That is all of them. The full list lives here, and none of them needs an account.