Smush

Smush is a word-composition game where letters wear out. The board is a square of nine tiles, each showing its point value and five small charge dots: a letter can be used only five times, and once exhausted it has been "smush'ed." At the center sits a golden tile with unlimited uses, but it is required in every proposed word. The game presents itself as still in development and displays a feedback button.

1. Compose a word by clicking the tiles on the board; the golden letter in the center must be included.
2. Reuse the same letter multiple times within the word if needed: each use consumes one of the tile's five charges, the golden one excepted.
3. Correct with Delete, reshuffle the layout with Shuffle, then confirm with the Smush! button.
4. Look for doublings: the spiky tile, which changes place after each turn, doubles the word, and exhausting a letter's last charge doubles it as well.
5. Hunt for the word that uses every letter on the board: each grid contains at least one, it awards a bonus, and even more if it's played first.

Making letters perishable changes everything: an obvious word is no longer just an obvious word, it's also an expense. The score calculation displays live while you compose, with its multipliers, so you hesitate, erase, reshuffle, and end up playing a word that's less pretty but better rewarded. Add the spiky tile that moves each turn and the pangram to be found first, and a Smush grid becomes a small resource-management game disguised as a vocabulary game.

Everything is quantified and immediate. Above the board, a status line shows the current score, the number of words already found and the number of words still possible, with a marker set to the day's average score. While composing, the current word is displayed with the breakdown of its calculation, multiplier included, even before confirmation. Finds stack in a dedicated area, "The pile", and a pangram indicator remains locked until a certain score is reached.

Daily game

One grid per day, with its average score shown as a marker.

Archive and history

Two links placed under the board give access to past grids and to the player's history.

4×3

A link labeled 4×3 appears alongside Archive and History, while the daily board is a square of nine letters.

• Always start from the golden letter: it is mandatory and inexhaustible, so build around it, not around rare letters.
• The game offers two ways to double a word, the spiky tile and exhausting the last charge of a letter. Since the spiky tile moves each turn, it's better to keep a one-charge letter in reserve to choose the moment of doubling.
• The word that uses all the letters scores more if played first: look for it before squandering charges rather than discovering it late in the grid.