Welcome to Word Toss

Object of the Game

Each letter of the alphabet, excluding Q and X, has been placed onto a set of four dice. Those dice were rolled a number of times, and some words were formed. The bottom section of the screen shows those words. For example, if the word 'MAZE' is in the word list, you know that the letters M, A, Z, and E must be on different dice, so that it is possible to roll the dice and have that word formed. Your task is to determine how to arrange all of the letters on the dice so that it is possible to roll all of the words in the word list.

Starting the Game

If you are playing WordToss from our ezine, The Puzzle Quest, or if you are playing WordToss from our Daily Puzzle Page, the game starts playing as soon as the applet has finished loading.

If you are playing the WordToss demo, the applet starts by displaying a welcome screen. The demo contains 10 WordToss puzzles, as shown by the numbered buttons along the bottom of the applet. Start playing one of the demo puzzles by clicking on one of those numbered buttons. After you have completed a puzzle, or if you want to stop a puzzle early, click on the 'Menu' button, and you will be returned to the Welcome screen.

Playing a Puzzle

At the top of the screen, the four dice are displayed. One die is in the pink region, one is in the yellow, and the remaining two dice are in the green and blue regions. There are two pictures of each die: the front and the back views. As you place letters on the dice, the letters will appear on these images.

Below these dice are sliders, one for each of the letters. If you click on one of the dots, the letter's slider will move to that spot. For example, if you click on A's dot in the pink region, A's slider moves to that dot, and the letter 'A' will be placed on the pink die.

If you decide that a letter cannot be placed on a particular die, right click the dot. This will draw a 'do not place' symbol over that dot, to remind you of your deductions. A second right-click on the spot will remove the 'do not place' symbol.

The right side of the screen contains the word list. Each row represents one of the words that could be formed by rolling the dice. As you place letters on the dice, the dice images in the word list will also be shaded the appropriate color.

It would be a mistake to place two letters from the same word on the same die. You can easily catch this mistake, because those two letters would have the same color in the word list.

When all of the letters in the word list are colored, you are mostly done solving the puzzle. There may be a couple of extra letters that did not appear in any of the words, but have not yet been placed on a die. Only one of the dice will have empty spots, so just place the remaining letters on that die.

One final thing that is important to note is that only the GROUPING of letters is important, not their exact placement. For example, if you determine that the letters A & E must be on the same die, it makes no difference if you place them on the pink or the green die. The important thing is that they are placed on the SAME die.

Hints

Here are some hints that might help you solve a puzzle:

  • If you see a word in the word-list that has only a single letter on a white die, then you should be able to place that letter. For example, if three of the letters for a word are on the pink, green, and blue dice, then the remaining letter must go on the yellow die.
  • If you get stuck, try eliminating some possibilities. For each word in the word list, if some letters are placed, you know that the remaining letters for that word must be on different dice. For example, if the word is 'MAZE', and the letters 'A' and 'Z' are placed on the blue and yellow dice, then you can eliminate 'M' and 'E' from those two dice. Put the 'do not place' symbol over the 'M' and 'E' in the blue and yellow regions. After you have eliminated possibilities, look for a letter that can only be placed on a single die (there is only one region without the 'do not place').
  • After you have tried the above hints, try this: Pick a word in the word list with some unplaced (white) letters. See which of those letters can be placed on which of the dice. There might be one of the dice that can only have one of the letters, so you know the letter would have to go on that die.
  • For some of the puzzles, you might have to resort to some tricky reasoning. You might have the letters 'A', 'B', 'C', and 'D' to place, and only two dice with open faces for letters. Perhaps one die has three open faces, and the other die has only one open face. By looking at the word list, you can see that 'A' cannot be on the same dice as either the 'B', 'C', or 'D'. The 'A' must go on the one die, and the 'B', 'C', and 'D' must go on the second die.

Control Bar

When the demo game is displaying the Welcome screen, the Control Bar contains buttons for each of the ten puzzles in the demo set. Click one of these buttons to start that puzzle.

While you are playing a puzzle, the Control Bar will display the following buttons:

Menu
Click on this button to return to the Welcome screen. Note that this button is only present for the Demo game, it is not needed for the Daily Puzzle game or for The Puzzle Quest game.
Start
Click on this button to reset the puzzle. All of your moves for the puzzle will be erased, so you can start playing the puzzle from the beginning.
Undo
Click on this button to undo your last move. You can repeatedly click this button to back up as far as you desire.
Redo
If you have erased any moves by clicking 'Undo', you can click this button to redo those moves. However, if you back up a number of moves, then make a different move, you will not be able to redo the erased moves.
Mute
If you click on the 'Mute' button, the background song will be stopped. If you click again on the 'Mute' button, a different song will start playing.

Why Buy the Game?

If you enjoy playing the WordToss demo, there are several reasons why you should consider buying the game:

  • The full version of WordToss comes with 4,000 puzzles. If you play one puzzle a day, that is a ten-year supply. (If you play 400 puzzles a day, the game is good for a week and a half!)
  • The game has hints and answers for each puzzle. If you are stuck on a puzzle, click on 'Hint'. The program will suggest a move for you to make. You can also ask where a specific letter should be placed.
  • The game comes with sound effects and several more songs, adding to your enjoyment of the game.

Thanks

Thank you for playing this demo of WordToss. We hope you have enjoyed playing the game. If you are interested in WordToss, please visit our website at www.coregames.com.

On our website, we offer several other games in our 'Daily Puzzle Series', along with our award winning games 'Rich Diamond' and 'The Mad Scientist'.