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FAQ

The game

What is Pantasm?

A daily word game about pangrams. One puzzle a day, seven levels, one shared chain: everyone in the world climbs the same letters. Each level shows you a set of letters. Make words from them. Make a word that uses every letter in the set and you graduate to the next level, where a new letter joins the pile. Clear all seven before your attempts run out and you win.

What counts as a pangram?

A word that uses every letter in the set at least once. Repeats welcome, nothing from outside. If the set is A E R T, then TEAR is a pangram and ART is not (no E). Any pangram clears the level, not just the one we had in mind.

Do shorter words help, or should I only go for pangrams?

Shorter words are real moves, not wasted turns. A valid word still scores points and also reveals one letter of the level's hidden answer (except in Brutal mode). However, it also costs an attempt, and the fewer attempts you take, the higher your score will be (see Scoring).

Rules

How many guesses do I get, and what costs one?

Fifteen attempts for the whole run, all seven levels. Every accepted word costs one, pangram or not. You aren't penalized for words that use letters outside the set, words under three letters, or duplicates (a word only counts once, ever, even across levels). Misspellings are free too, except in Brutal mode, where they cost an attempt.

Why wasn't my word accepted?

Almost always one of four reasons: it uses a letter the level doesn't have, it's under three letters, you already played it, or it isn't in our dictionary. The dictionary is large but has edges: proper nouns, hyphenations, and obscure inflections tend to live outside them.

Why did a word get accepted and then rejected a moment later?

Your device carries a compact local copy of the dictionary so the game feels instant. That copy is very rarely wrong, roughly one accepted word in a thousand, and the server keeps the real list. When they disagree, the server wins and the board quietly takes the word back. Your final score is always the server's version of events.

Scoring

How is my score calculated?

Three parts, added together.

Word points: every accepted word scores its letter values, the classic tile values you already know (1 for an E, 10 for a Q).

Level bonuses: the pangram that clears a level gets a multiplier equal to the level you're on (1 through 7), except we subtract any extra attempts. If your level 3 pangram is your fourth guess of the run, that's one extra, so the multiplier is 3 - 1 = 2. Level bonuses never go negative.

Win bonus: finish the chain and every attempt you didn't use pays 10 points.

Achievement points land on top of all that.

Why was my level bonus zero?

Extra attempts caught up with you. Early levels are fragile: two extra attempts by level 2 and its bonus is gone. Level 7 can absorb six. The pangram still scores its word points, you just don't get the flourish.

What's the highest possible score?

It changes daily with the letters. A perfect run on the curated chain, seven pangrams and not one wasted attempt, lands around 585 before achievements. And that isn't the ceiling: find pangrams that outscore the ones we picked and you can beat it, which is exactly what the Beat the Chain achievement celebrates.

What is Brutal mode and what do I get for surviving it?

A special mode for people who consider hints a personal insult. Brutal removes letter reveals entirely and makes misspellings cost an attempt (normally they're free). Your reward for beating it is an extra 100 points, plus you get a sweet fire emoji to share with the world, win or lose.

Hints

How do I get a hint, and what does one cost?

Play a shorter word. Every valid non-pangram word reveals one letter of the level's hidden answer, the pangram we curated for that level. There's no hint button and no fee. The real price is the attempt the word cost you, which also nudges your bonuses down. Pangrams reveal nothing (you're leaving anyway), and Brutal mode reveals nothing ever.

Which letter gets revealed?

Strap in, this is a little scientific. We show you the leftmost position of a letter you didn't use. So if you didn't use an E, we would show you the first E. If we've already revealed all the letters you didn't use, we show you the first blank space instead. A single hint can tell you a lot about where letters aren't; sharp players read the silence.

Do I need to guess the level's secret answer?

No. We curated an answer chain to represent par and give hints a stable base. Quite often there are better scoring pangrams than the ones we used.

Streaks, achievements, and sharing

What achievements are there and what are they worth?

Four carry points, all requiring a win:

  • Beat the Chain, +25: every level cleared with a pangram scoring higher than our curated answer.
  • Expeditious, +25: win in under two minutes.
  • Clean sweep, +20: win with zero extra attempts. Seven levels, seven words.
  • Brutal completion, +100: finish in Brutal mode.

Badges, worth nothing and coveted anyway: Photo Finish (won with no attempts to spare), Voluminous Lexicon (played a genuinely rare word), and streak badges at 3, 7, 30, and 365 days. A DNF earns no achievement points at all.

What's the difference between a winning streak and a clean streak?

A winning streak counts consecutive daily wins. A clean streak counts consecutive clean sweeps, wins with zero extra attempts, and is accordingly much harder to keep alive. Both only grow on the day's puzzle, played on the day.

Why didn't my archive game count toward my streak or stats?

Streaks and community stats belong to the daily. An archive run still scores fully, achievements included, and shows you how you'd have placed against that day's frozen results. But it feeds nothing: no streaks, no records, no aggregates, and its badges render dimmed. The archive is for the love of the game.

What do the colored squares in shares mean?

One square per attempt, in order, colored by the level it was spent on: red for level 1 up through white for level 7 (there's no emoji for indigo or violet, so we had to make do). A red X at the end means the run ended early. A fire emoji means Brutal.

Nuts and bolts

When does the new puzzle come out?

Midnight, your local time. When your calendar flips, so does the puzzle.

Can I play past puzzles? Can I replay one I finished?

The archive has every puzzle from day one through yesterday. Unplayed days are yours to play, and a run you abandoned picks up where you left it. A finished day reopens your results instead: one run per puzzle, no replays.

Do I need an account? Will I lose my streak if I switch devices?

No accounts, ever. Your browser holds an anonymous random ID and your streaks and records hang off it. That has an honest downside: a new device, or clearing your browser data, means a fresh ID and a streak starting from zero. There's no transfer. We're sorry, and also this is the price of never asking for your email.

What data do you store about me?

As little as we can get away with. No name, no email, no account, no tracking profile. Your browser keeps your runs and settings. Our servers keep each run's guesses and timing, keyed to that anonymous ID, because scores, streaks, and the daily stats have to add up. Cloudflare, which hosts the game, also keeps aggregate traffic analytics for us: page views, countries, browsers. No cookies, and nothing tied to your player ID. That's the list.