Four puzzles sharing one keyboard
Quad Words takes the single-word guessing game and runs four copies of it side by side. The boards sit in a two-by-two block, each hiding its own five-letter word, and the four words are always different. Every guess you type lands on all four at once, and you have nine rows to finish them all.
The arithmetic shapes the whole game. Four words in nine guesses means you can only afford five guesses that do not solve a board. Spend them on information early, and the end of the game becomes a clean run of four answers.
Spending your first three rows
The strongest openings test as many different common letters as possible, without caring which board they help. A set like STARE, CLOUD and PINKY covers fifteen letters with no repeats, including every vowel and Y. After three such rows, most boards will show several greens and yellows, and a few will already be nearly solved.
Do not try to solve a board with your first guess just because it looks promising. A word that helps only one board wastes the chance to learn about the other three. Breadth first, then depth.
Once the information rows are in, read each board on its own. The same letter can be green on one board, yellow on another and grey on a third. A useful habit is to say each board's pattern out loud, such as "board two: starts with SH, has an E, no A".
Choosing which board to solve
After your opening, look for the board with the fewest possible answers and solve it first. A solved board is not only one word closer to the win. The guess you used to solve it also lands on the other three boards and gives them fresh colours.
That gives you a second idea. When two boards are both nearly solved, start with the answer whose letters would teach you most about the boards that are still open. If one board's answer contains M and P, and the open boards still need to know about M and P, solve that board first.
Here is a worked example. Say after three rows, the top-left board is down to one word, the top-right has two candidates, and the bottom two are still wide open. Solve the top-left first. Then, for the top-right, choose the candidate that contains letters the bottom boards still need. If it is right, you solved two boards in two rows. If it is wrong, the other candidate is certain, and the bottom boards still gained data.
The split keyboard
Each key on the on-screen keyboard is divided into four corners, matching the four boards. A corner turns green, yellow or grey to show that letter's status on that board. Glancing at a key tells you, for example, that R is grey on three boards but yellow on the bottom-right one.
Use this before every guess. It stops you from repeating a letter that is dead on every open board, and it shows at a glance which board still needs a vowel.
Common ways to run out of rows
- Tunnel vision. Focusing on one stubborn board while three others sit half-solved. If a board has many candidates left, leave it and come back once other guesses have lit up more of its letters.
- Saving the hardest for last. If your final two boards both have several candidates, you will not have enough rows. Bring hard boards forward while you still have spare guesses.
- Forgetting solved boards are done. Once a board locks, its letters no longer matter. Pick your next words for the open boards only.
- Ignoring double letters. Repeated letters are as common here as in any five-letter word. If a board stalls, try a candidate with a repeat.
Getting better
Quad Words has no difficulty levels, so improvement comes from efficiency. Watch how many rows you need. A fair first target is solving all four with one or two rows to spare. If you are new to this kind of feedback, a few rounds of Word Guess build the reading skills faster, because there is only one board to track. The statistics panel records your wins and guess counts, so you can see whether a new opening is paying off.
