Sutom

Sutom is the French daily word game that runs on the colour code of the television show Motus: a red square for a letter in the right place, a yellow circle for a letter that belongs elsewhere in the word, and plain blue for a letter that is not in it. It is written and maintained by JonathanMM, whose rules panel credits Wordle and Motus, and it is free with no account. Every day brings one word of six to ten letters, the same for every player, and the grid hands you its first letter before you type anything: the opening row shows that letter followed by a dot for each remaining slot. You have six attempts, every guess must start with the given letter and exist in the game's dictionary, and proper nouns are refused. The grid keeps what you have earned, because a letter confirmed in place appears already filled in on the next row, so the puzzle narrows visibly from guess to guess.

1. Read the grid before typing: the first letter is already in place and a dot marks every remaining slot, so you know the word's length and its opening letter.
2. Type a French word of that exact length starting with that letter. Only words from the game's dictionary are accepted, and proper nouns are refused.
3. Validate with the return key. The row colours itself letter by letter: a red square for the right place, a yellow circle for a letter present but misplaced, blue for a letter that is absent.
4. Check the keyboard under the grid: it takes the same three states, so the letters you have ruled out and the letters you have found stay marked.
5. Start the next row from what is already confirmed: the game pre-fills the letters you placed correctly and marks each open slot with a dot.
6. Use the remaining attempts, six in all, to place the misplaced letters and fill the gaps. The summary opens as soon as you win or the sixth row fails.

Sutom is the game French players mean when they say they play the daily word. With the first letter free and words running to ten letters, the opening is not about probing positions but about working the vowel skeleton of a long word whose start you already know, which suits readers who enjoy French vocabulary more than five-letter guesswork. Skip it if you want an English word list or a stock of past puzzles to grind through: there is one grid a day, and only yesterday's unfinished grid can be picked up again. A grid takes a few minutes, and six wrong rows end it.

Validating a full row colours it: a letter in the right spot gets a red square, a letter present elsewhere gets a yellow circle, and an absent letter stays on the blue background, each with its own sound when audio is on. A letter typed more times than the word contains it is marked blue on the extra copy. The keyboard takes the same states, and the next row opens with your confirmed letters filled in. Statistics stay shut until the game ends; then the summary shows the emoji grid with your score out of six, a share button, your win distribution and your average number of guesses.

Mot du jour

One word of six to ten letters a day, the same for every player, in six attempts. There is no second mode; the only extra is the option to finish the previous day's grid from the end-of-game summary.

• The first letter is free, so spend your opening guess on vowels rather than on a common opener. A word of nine letters usually carries four or five of them, and placing those narrows the rest faster than any consonant.
• Length is the strongest clue Sutom gives you. A ten-letter French word almost always carries a familiar suffix, so testing one of those on guess two costs little and can settle the last third of the grid.
• Count a letter before you repeat it. When you type a letter more times than the word contains it, the extra copy is marked blue even though the letter is present, which is how the game tells you how many times the word holds it.
• Read the keyboard as much as the grid. Every key keeps the best status its letter has earned, so the state of the puzzle is readable at a glance without going back through your rows.
• Set your keyboard before you start if AZERTY is not yours. The Configuration panel offers AZERTY, BÉPO, QWERTY and QWERTZ layouts, along with dark, light and accessible themes, the sound volume, haptic feedback and whether the summary shows your time.
• Do not write off a grid you abandoned yesterday. The summary that opens after today's game carries a Terminer la partie button for the previous day's word, though nothing older comes back.