Zigzag

Zigzag lays out four rows of five letters and a single rule: a word is formed by taking exactly one letter from each column, left to right, with the row allowed to change at each step. All words are therefore five letters long. The hunt is two-tiered, shown on two side-by-side counters: ten “bonus” words, each accompanied by a definition and represented by five dashes in the left column, and ten “basic” words to find freely without clues. A score totals everything. Below the board, the editor publishes its own notes on the game, which detail the scoring.

1. Open Zigzag: the day's grid loads with its twenty letters, and the three counters show BASIC 0/10, BONUS 0/10 and SCORE 0.
2. Build a word by taking one letter per column, in order, moving up or down freely from one row to another between columns.
3. Watch the five slots beneath the grid, which fill as you choose letters; a backspace removes the last character and a Shuffle button is offered next to it.
4. Look for the easy words first, then tackle the ten definitions in the left column, each corresponding to a five-letter word to compose on the same grid.
5. A "Give up! (Reveal all words)" button sits under the board to reveal all the words.

Because the column constraint makes the search space tiny yet unreadable to the naked eye: four choices per column, five columns, and, according to the editor's notes, only a few dozen real words in there. The two lists pull in opposite directions (one where you start from a definition to find a path, the other where you start from a path to recognize a word), and it's that back-and-forth that keeps the grid going beyond the first finds.

Feedback is a dashboard, not a color code: two counters out of ten and a score, which remain at zero as long as nothing has been validated. The bonus column displays each missing word as five dashes followed by its definition, so you can always see how many definitions still resist discovery. For the free words, the list responds with an encouraging line while it is empty, and the scoring published by the editor under the board states seven points per definition word, three per free word, ten of each counted, for a total of one hundred points for a perfect day.

Daily grid

A single grid per day, dated in the banner. The portal adds leaderboards and an optional free account, which have not been opened.

• All words are five letters, one per column: the two outer columns set the possible initial and final letters. Reviewing the four possible initials and the four possible finals before searching greatly reduces the field.
• The notes published by the editor under the board advise working by variation: once you find a word, change just one column and see what survives. The game's geometry lends itself to this, since each column offers only four choices.
• Free words are not clued and are worth less than definition words according to the site's scoring: cashing them in first raises the counter without having to match a definition, and in the process teaches you what's in the columns.