Listed words and bonus words

Two pots, on purpose

ENABLE (the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon, public domain) is large. A Classic 4×4 with eight-way paths can legally form more strings than anyone wants to hunt before breakfast. Mega 5×5 multiplies that further. If every legal ENABLE token were required, the daily would stop being a puzzle you finish in one sitting. It would become a scavenger hunt through a specialist dictionary.

The required list is the sitting. The bonus pile is what remains for people who want to keep looking. That is a design choice, not a dictionary accident.

The engine can see every reachable word on the grid. Frequency data from open English corpora is the first cut. A person then caps the list for obscurity. Frequency is an ordering signal only. The site does not redistribute that data.

A four-letter listed word is eight points. A six-letter listed word is twelve. Genius is one hundred percent of the listed-word maximum. Speed points, like bonus points, sit in their own pot beside the rank. The five rules live on how to play. This note is which words are asked for.

Mini, Classic, and Mega share the same idea with different floors and different list lengths. Mini 3×3 accepts three-letter words and keeps the sitting short. Classic 4×4 and Mega 5×5 ask for four letters at minimum. The pot split does not change with size. Listed still drives rank. Bonus still sits beside it.

Everyday words on the list

Listed words are meant to be words you would actually use. Lane, stone, bread, plant. That register. High-frequency survivors of the grid rise. Rare survivors fall. After the machine ranks what the letters can spell, the hand-cap decides whether a rare ENABLE entry is kind enough to require. A dialect verb nobody says at the table does not become a listed word just because the path is legal.

The kindness is practical. A daily that asked for obscure ENABLE leftovers would train players to distrust the list. Everyday English on the list is how the puzzle stays a letter-path game rather than a lexicography quiz. The bonus pot is where the leftovers go when they are still real and still reachable. Accepted. Scored lightly. Never required for Genius.

Minimum length is part of the same kindness. A three-letter try on Classic is called too short before it is called “not a word.” You are never scolded for invalid English when the real problem was the floor.

Kids mode is a Settings toggle, not a separate site. It loads a tighter Classic or Mini lexicon aimed at ages five to eight and omits the Word of the Day. Mega is not filtered by that toggle. The default audience is general, not child-directed. This page is about the general boards. Kids is mentioned only so the split is not confused with a second product.

Using a tile in one listed word does not retire it for other words. There is no pangram bonus in the “use every tile in one word” sense. The list is a set of paths, not a packing problem. Finding STONE does not lock those letters away from LANE. That reuse across words is what lets a small grid carry a finishable list.

Proper names and rare leftovers tend to stay bonus

ENABLE contains tokens that look like names. A grid will sometimes spell PARIS or ROMAN or HELEN. Those strings are usually real English in some sense. The engine will accept them if they meet the length floor. They are not, as a rule, what the puzzle is asking you to find. A daily that required a handful of given names would feel like a trivia quiz. The hand-cap exists for that reason. If a token is more name than word, it goes to bonus, or it is dropped.

The same instinct applies to obscure ENABLE leftovers that are not names. A rare survivor that sits cleanly on the path graph is still a leftover if nobody would say it at the table. It may score as bonus. It does not move Genius. Everyday English stays on the checklist. Rare leftovers stay in the side pot.

Hyphenated forms and most proper nouns as you would write them in a sentence are not on the list. If ENABLE does not carry the token, the board will not accept it. You will not get credit for a hyphenated compound you just invented. A brand or a street name is not a secret listed word. The official list is the ENABLE subset that survived frequency, reachability, and the hand-cap. Not “any English you can argue for.”

Dead tiles

Some letters on a board will never start a listed word. Some will barely participate. Call them dead tiles if you like. They are not a separate mechanic and they are not a penalty. A Q with no U in reach is often quiet. A J that only touches a cluster of consonants may contribute to nothing listed. Those tiles still matter. They block paths. They force a detour. They sometimes unlock a bonus word you were not looking for.

The generator does not try to make every tile equally useful. It tries to make a grid whose listed words are all reachable, whose difficulty is in range, and whose leftover letters do not accidentally hide a required word the player cannot form. A dead tile is a side effect of that. If a letter looks idle, look at the paths it interrupts before you assume it is filler.

Dead tiles also explain why bonus hunting feels different from list clearing. The listed set was chosen to be finishable. The bonus set is what the same letters still allow after that choice. A quiet corner letter that never opens a listed path may still complete an obscure leftover. That leftover pays one point a letter and does not change your rank. It is optional craft, not unfinished homework.

An invented board, not a live daily

The sample below is made up so this page does not spoil any shipped file. It is not stored under /puzzles/. It is not today’s Mini, Classic, or Mega.

Invented Classic-sized sample. STAR along the top row. Not a live daily.

STAR is ordinary English in a straight line. STONE can be walked S-T-O-N-E if you take the diagonal from T down-left to O, then across N and E. That is the adjacency rule the diagonals note spends a whole page on. LANE and PINE sit in the same neighbourhood. Those are the kind of words that belong on a list. Short, common, finishable in one sitting.

If the letters also lined up as PARIS, that would tend to stay bonus. A proper name, accepted if ENABLE has the token and the path is legal, not required. An obscure ENABLE leftover would be hand-capped off the list even if the path is clean. Y in the corner of this sample may do very little for listed words and still matter as a block or a bonus hinge. None of this is a spoiler for a real day.

Frequency, then a hand

The pipeline is mechanical first. A generator proposes letters. The engine enumerates eight-way paths. Every candidate is checked against ENABLE and against the mode’s minimum length. Frequency ranks the survivors. High-frequency words are the default listed set. Low-frequency words become bonus, or they are discarded if they are too obscure to be kind. Then a person reads the list. That last step is the hand-cap. A judgment, not a second dictionary.

The same pipeline builds Mini, Classic, and Mega. Mega is a 5×5 with a longer list and the same four-letter floor as Classic. It is not given a kids variant. How the generator, the reachability proof, and the shipped JSON fit together is the subject of how a board is built. The short version is that no listed word ships unless it is actually reachable. That is why the game should never tell you a required word is invalid.

Frequency alone would still leave edge cases. A word can be frequent in a corpus and wrong for a daily sitting. Too name-like. Too specialist. Too mean as a required find. The hand-cap is where those edge cases are caught. It is also where a cluster of awkward leftovers can be pushed entirely to bonus so the listed set stays warm. The machine orders. The hand decides kindness.

Word of the Day, hints, and the fifth star

On the general boards, one bonus word is marked as the Word of the Day. It does not move your rank. It is a nudge toward the bonus pile, not a sixth rank and not a listed word in disguise. Kids boards ship without it. The fifth star is the completionist mark. Every listed word and every bonus word. Genius does not require it. If you never look at bonus words, you can still finish the puzzle the site asked you to finish.

Hints point at listed words you have not found, not at bonus words. Each board, including each archive day, has its own hint pool. Extra hints on the web come from a house video on this origin, not a Google rewarded unit. That separation matches the pots. Hints protect the sitting, not the optional leftovers.

Speed Streak points are a third pot with a similar name and a different job. They sit beside rank the way bonus points do. A careful solve and a fast one reach Genius on the same listed words. Bonus English and speed multipliers are both optional texture around the list, not replacements for it.

Why the split matters when you play

When a path is rejected, the first useful question is not always “is that a word?” It may be too short for the mode. It may jump, reuse a tile, or leave the grid. It may be real English that the board accepts as bonus rather than listed. Learning that difference keeps the daily calm. You are not failing Genius because you found a leftover. You are exploring after the sitting, or you are still hunting the checklist.

Archive days use the same split. An old Classic still has listed words that drive Genius and bonus leftovers that do not. The archive’s own hint pool still points at listed words only. Opening a past day is not a different dictionary philosophy. It is the same two pots on a date that is no longer “today.”

What this page is not

This is not a reprint of the rules. It is not a walkthrough of a live daily. It is also not ThinkFun PathWords or PathWords Jr, not pathwords.co.uk (which hands you the words and asks you to place them), and not Pathwords App by Richard Arnold. Pathwords at pathwords.co is the daily letter-path web game published by Pathwords. Play is on the homepage. The product page is about. Other notes are in the journal. Questions go to privacy@pathwords.co.

Everyday English on the list. Rare leftovers as bonus. Two points a letter versus one. Genius from listed words alone. A hand that keeps the sitting kind. That is the split. The board is how you walk it.

Published by Pathwords · pathwords.co