Toadle

Toadle replaces coloring with a single number. The hidden word has four letters, you get ten attempts, and each guess returns only a score: two points for each letter in the correct place, one point for each letter present but misplaced. Nothing else. The game itself sums up the expected approach, "You're a detective: guess, compare scores, work out the word", because an isolated score says nothing; it is the gap between two scores that speaks. A total of eight, that is four letters in place, signals the end of the game.

1. Type a four-letter word on the virtual keyboard and submit it.
2. Read the number shown at the end of the row: it is the total points, not a per-letter indication.
3. Compare that number with previous attempts; the game explicitly displays the differences as the real signal.
4. Tap a letter in a past guess to mark it green, yellow, or struck-through: these are personal annotations, not a calculation done by the game.
5. Continue up to ten attempts; a "Reveal answer" button remains available beneath the keyboard.

Because a single number per guess is a wickedly elegant constraint: it contains all the information and points to none of it. The game no longer rewards vocabulary but the construction of guesses. Choosing a word not so it might be right, but so that its score, compared with the previous one, can only be explained in a single way.

One integer per guess, and that is all. Two points for each letter in the correct position, one point for each letter of the word placed elsewhere: the score adds them together without ever saying which letters. No tile colors itself automatically. The available colors (green, yellow, struck-through), are marks the player places by hand on previous guesses so they do not lose track of their deductions.

Word of the Day

A daily grid, with a "Reveal answer" button to end the round.

Archive

The presentation states that the archive contains all past grids.

Hints

The game's text links to a hints page described as three nudges without spoilers.

• Varying only one letter between two guesses isolates its value: the score difference reads directly as +2, +1, or 0. This is the maneuver the game itself highlights in its example carousel.
• The score is a total, not a map. Two very different words can produce the same number, so a good score is meaningless until you have crossed it with a second guess designed to disambiguate.
• The green, yellow, and struck-through marks provide no new information: they serve to avoid losing what you have already deduced, which matters when the only trace on screen is a column of numbers.