Plusword

Plusword is a five-by-five grid with a twist in the last step. Five numbered clues each yield a five-letter answer, stacked one per row, and one column is highlighted throughout: the letters that land in it spell a sixth word, the Plusword itself, which is what the puzzle is actually asking for. Sample clues run "Common round fruit, often red or green", "Baked food made from flour", "Vast body of salt water", "Sound made when speaking" and "Large bird of prey", all at five letters, with the first column shaded.

1. Read all five clues before writing anything. They are plain definitions, and the easy ones anchor the grid.
2. Fill each five-letter answer into its numbered row.
3. Watch the highlighted column as it fills; those letters are the sixth word.
4. Solve the Plusword to finish. A column that spells nothing means one of the rows above it is wrong.

The highlighted column changes how you solve. In a normal crossword each answer stands alone; here every row feeds one shared letter into a word you cannot see yet, so a half-remembered answer can be confirmed backwards once the column starts making sense, and a confident answer that breaks the column is probably wrong. The clues themselves are deliberately plain, which keeps the difficulty in the final leap rather than in the definitions. It is a five-minute puzzle with a real ending, which is rarer than it sounds.

The grid fills row by row as clues resolve, and the shaded column accumulates its letters in place, so progress towards the Plusword is visible the whole time rather than revealed at the end. Each puzzle is numbered and dated, so the day's board is identifiable and shareable by its number.

Daily puzzle

One numbered, dated grid per day.

• Solve the clues you are certain of first, then read the column as a partial word. Two or three known letters in the right positions often give the Plusword before the other rows are done.
• Use the column as a checksum. If four answers feel right but the column spells nonsense, the error is in one of them. The grid is telling you where to look.
• The definitions are deliberately unfussy, so resist overthinking them. A vast body of salt water is exactly what it sounds like.