Most word puzzles are generous about what counts as a win. Find a word, score the word, move on. The board waits patiently for whatever you decide to play next. Wordeex is not going to let you off the hook that easily.

Wordeex, a brand-new free-to-play puzzle game on iOS and Android, works from a far more demanding premise: Every correct answer changes the problem. When you find a word and play it, those letters vanish from the board. The puzzle has shifted, and what remains is a narrower set of possibilities than the one you started with. Moves you considered a moment ago may no longer exist. The question is no longer just “what word can I make” but “what word should I make given where this board needs to end up.”

The endgame is maddeningly specific: The board has to be completely empty. Every letter must be used. And there is only one combination of words that accomplishes it.

That constraint produces a type of challenge most vocabulary-based games sidestep entirely. The board is not fixed while you work it. It evolves in response to your choices, and the choices available to you depend on the choices you have already made. A word that looks like the right move in isolation can close off the only path to a solution. A word that seems suboptimal can be the only one that keeps the sequence alive.

Here’s how it works: Every Wordeex starts with 16 letters, with between 3 and 5 words hidden among them.

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