From there, you have 44 seconds to chain together as many new words as you can, with plenty of other twists to make it more challenging. For a start, if you did replace that A with a T, the T would then be pinned in place so your next word would need to also start with T. So you’d go from THEM to THEY, meaning the T is unpinned but now Y is. It turns out that it’s pretty easy to make four-letter words, at first, but soon you’ll have exhausted your supply of THEM, THEN, THEY, WHEN and will find yourself stuck down a cul-de-sac, wishing SHEN was a word. Even if you do get stuck, there are options: you can click the pinned letter in a word to unpin it, opening up your available words in exchange for a four second penalty. You also add time to the clock the first time you use a letter, with more time awarded for less commonly used letters. Now you’ll wish ZHEN was a word. All of which makes Fast Four Words a tough game to play the first time. I spent a substantial portion of my first 44 seconds trying to internalise the rules, and since there’s only one puzzle per day, I then had to wait 24 hours to try again. I wish it had a practice mode. More importantly, it’s a compelling enough variant on Wordle that I did come back to try again. I scored 12 on the game for the 28th. You can try to beat my score by playing Fast Four Words in your browser for free.
