Combinations review: twelve tiles, a hidden word list and a goal to beat

What is Combinations?

Combinations is a free daily word puzzle built from fragments. Each puzzle has twelve tiles, and each tile holds at least two letters, such as st, ar or ing. Behind the tiles is a fixed list of real words you can make by joining them, and your aim is to find enough of them to reach a goal score.

The puzzles are generated and then checked by brute force: every tile combination is tried to make sure the word list is complete and that each word can be built in exactly one way. Accepted words are common dictionary words, with proper nouns, abbreviations and offensive words left out. The game runs in the browser in English, French and German, each with its own word list.

How a puzzle plays

You tap tiles in the order you want them joined, then press Submit. Tapping a selected tile again removes it, Clear deselects everything, and on a keyboard Enter submits and Backspace removes the last tile. A word needs at least two tiles. If it is not on the list, the display shakes and tells you so.

Scoring is simple once you see it: a word is worth its number of letters multiplied by the number of tiles minus one. So st·ar scores 4, st·ar·ed scores 12, and a four-tile word like re·pl·ay·ed scores 24. Words built from four or more tiles count as bonus words. The goal is set at half the points available from two- and three-tile words, which means you never need a bonus word to solve the puzzle.

The small number on each tile is the best feature. It shows how many unfound words still use that tile and goes down as you find them, so a tile showing zero is finished and a tile showing three is worth a closer look. A bar with five stars fills as your score climbs toward the goal, and you can keep playing after solving to find every word.

Daily, archive and Unlimited

The Daily puzzle starts at midnight in your local time, and everyone gets the same puzzle for the same date. Puzzle #1 was released on 25 September 2026. Solving today’s puzzle adds you to a “solved today” count and extends a streak, and the share button copies your stars, your score against the goal and the number of words found, without giving away any of the words themselves.

A calendar lets you go back and play any earlier day you missed. Archive puzzles are marked as such and do not affect your streak. Unlimited mode is a separate pool of several hundred practice puzzles per language, and those do not count toward the streak or the solver count either. For a calmer word game from the same network, Word Search hides ten themed words in a grid each day.

Difficulty and strategy

The early points come easily. Most players will spot a handful of two-tile words in the first minute, and the goal is reachable without anything exotic. The challenge is in the three-tile words, which score double, and in the bonus chains that need you to see a word like replaying as four separate pieces. Common endings such as ed, ing and er are often the key, because they attach to several stems.

What could be better

Because the word list is fixed and limited to common words, you will sometimes build a perfectly good word and be told it is not in the list. That is the price of a puzzle with a known, complete answer set, and the tile counters soften it, but it can still sting. A gentler message for real words that are simply not in the puzzle would help.

There is no dark mode and no timer, so late-night play is bright and there is no way to race a friend on time. The language list also stops at three. None of this affects the core puzzle, but they are the first things we would add.

Verdict

Combinations is a genuinely fresh daily word game. The fragment idea is easy to learn, the scoring rewards longer chains without making them compulsory, and the tile counters turn a hidden word list into something you can reason about. Add a streak, a full archive and a spoiler-free share line, and it earns a place next to Wordle in a morning routine. If you want a word game that asks for more than guessing five letters, start here.

Combinations FAQ