Droplet

Droplet is a six-column by eight-row well into which letters fall, and your job is to make them land so as to spell words, in rows or in columns, never diagonally. The layout is fixed and reads like a map: two 4W squares at the very top, then 3W, then 2W, and conversely the letter multipliers 4L, 3L, 2L sit at the bottom of the well. At the top of the screen, three counters: SCORE, WORDS, and LIVES 3/3. Two slots labeled HOLD and NEXT flank the top, a red dashed line marks the line not to be crossed, and a "Found words" panel on the left awaits a list of your finds. On load, the well displays READY and a Start button.

1. Press the Start button placed beneath the READY message.
2. Steer the falling letter toward one of the six columns, each topped by its own arrow button.
3. Build words that read contiguously, in a row or in a column (the game excludes diagonals).
4. Move valuable letters onto the 4L, 3L and 2L squares at the bottom, and only go for the 4W and 3W at the top if you accept building high.
5. Watch the height of the stack: according to the game's notes, it's the only thing that kills you, and you only have three lives.

A word game where the timer is not a clock but a rising stack: the more you score, the faster the descent, so your own success creates the difficulty. And the site's editor accompanies the game with an editorial notes block, "FROM THE DESK / Notes on Droplet", which is rare for a daily puzzle.

Everything is shown numerically at the top of the board: SCORE, WORDS and LIVES 3/3. Validated words are filed in the "Found words" column on the left. The well itself serves as an indicator, with its red dashed line at the top and its colored bonus squares that never change from one game to the next.

Core play

Single default puzzle: letters fall into a fixed six-column by eight-row well and you steer them into columns to spell contiguous words horizontally or vertically (diagonals do not count). The board layout and bonus geography are fixed (two 4W at the very top, then 3W, then 2W; 4L/3L/2L at the bottom). The UI shows SCORE, WORDS and LIVES (3/3) at the top, HOLD and NEXT slots, a red dashed ‘do not cross’ line, and a ‘Found words’ panel. On load the well displays READY and a Start button.

• The notes published beneath the game advise keeping the floor flat: an even stack leaves each column available as a drop point.
• The geography of the bonuses doesn't change, so it's learned once and for all: letter multipliers at the bottom, where tiles fall anyway; word multipliers at the top, paid for with risk.
• The well is six columns wide but eight deep: a very long word can therefore only be written vertically, and because the stack rises while the column is read top to bottom, it is built backwards, last letter first.