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The Telegraph’s smash-hit PlusWord turns one – so which kind of player are you?
Puzzle fanatics have gone mad for our very own invention, an addictive hybrid of crossword and Wordle. Not tried it? Get involved!
Exactly one year ago, Chris Lancaster unleashed a new set of partitions on this already deeply divided nation, and it persists to this day. Lancaster, the Telegraph’s long standing puzzles and crosswords editor, meant well: he is the inventor of PlusWord, the simple yet ferociously addictive word game that has had millions of us in its grip for the last 12 months.
Available on the Puzzles app or the Telegraph website, PlusWord is a combination of crossword and the 2022 sensation Wordle. A CrossWordle, if you will (but I suspect the copyright holders wouldn’t). A five by five grid is filled in first, which gives the players some clues as to the titular mystery word. “If you like Wordle, PlusWord is even better,” Mumsnet readers proclaimed last year. And you’d be insane to disagree with Mumsnet readers.
The thing that sent Wordle stratospheric wasn’t merely the simplicity of it, but the shareability. At the touch of a button, people could boast online about how quickly they finished that day’s puzzle, without giving away the answer. So it is with PlusWord, which may bring people together – we all get the same puzzle, once a day, and we can then all chat about it afterwards – but Lancaster’s invention has also cleaved us into new personality types.
Everybody approaches their PlusWord slightly differently, you see. Some race, some dawdle. Some compete, others co-operate. Some go down, others go across. Some take wild guesses, others wouldn’t dream of it. Humans contain multitudes, and so do puzzles.
So, happy birthday PlusWord. What kind of player are you?
Clockwork Colins
PlusWord burst into their daily routine some time last year and quickly set up camp at the precise same time every day. And probably in the same place, too. Lying in bed with a cup of tea. Strap-hanging on a commuter train. Seeing out their lunch break in the office canteen. Pausing on a dog walk. Sitting on the loo. Holed up in their specially-commissioned PlusWord Bunker, which used to be known as “the garage”. Queueing for a croissant. Peddling on a Peloton.
These people all have their way, and they stick to it. It means that any unexpected impediment to their “PlusWord time” is met with short shrift or, more likely, a quick rescheduling to a more convenient time slot. It may only take them a minute or two, but it is a sacred minute indeed. Me? Always with a coffee, first thing in the morning, when the house is quiet. The clues and the caffeine intermingle, rousing me for what is ahead. If I complete it in one fell swoop, the day is already a good one. If I struggle, I may as well go back to bed; it’s a write-off.
One-up Wandas
The message comes early. “Done the PlusWord yet today?” This is not somebody asking to make sure you’ve taken a break, or stimulated your brain, or had some time to yourself; they do not care for your welfare. No, all they want to know is if they completed it quicker than you.
The instigator – he or she who sends that message – would only do so if they were particularly proud of their time. On rare occasions, they may be ashamed of their time, but wish to know they are not alone in having found today’s tricky. But mostly they just want to beat you.
It may be that you have an established daily competition with a partner, relative or friend, and the slate with your PlusWord Pal is wiped clean at the upload of each new puzzle. Or it may be simply a personal best you attempt to beat, rather than each other. Or, if you’re a particular kind of competitive weirdo, it may be that the average time is the key metric. These are all subsets of the One-up Wandas.
My own PB – so glad you asked, thank you – is a thoroughly respectable 41 seconds. And you would not believe how difficult it was to get this far into the article before mentioning it.
Half-job Henriettas
The great genius of Lancaster’s creation is that it melds two established puzzle forms: a fun-sized crossword and a Wordle-style guessing game. Like that other great puzzling two-hander, Countdown, it isn’t entirely necessary to be prodigious at both parts in order to succeed, but it does help.
Any PlusWorder has experienced the agony of racing through the crossword only to be flummoxed by the PlusWord itself. The seconds creep by, and slowly, your faith in your answers evaporates. Later, when some One-up Wanda asks how you got on, you want to say, “Well, I did the grid in 35 seconds… but do you mean the whole thing? Right, yep. 19 minutes.”
Strategic Simons
In my experience, the best way to approach a PlusWord is to hurl yourself at it and try to answer everything in a haphazard, frenzied assault on the board, flicking this way and that, up and down, then if there are just a few random squares left, guess at them and get straight onto the final word. This works well if you enter a kind of flow state, where your fingers and brain are clearly doing the PlusWord, but in a way, it is also happening unconsciously.
Other people are more prescriptive in their methods. They perhaps carry disciplined habits from PlusWord’s bigger crossword brothers and sisters. All the acrosses, say, then all the downs. Alternating, to cover more ground. Filling in any green squares at the bottom as soon as they’re filled on the grid, to help with the final word ahead of time. Refusing to move on until a clue is answered. Or the opposite, cycling through them all at speed, then back to the top. These people are the Prosts to our Sennas.
Desktop Dennises
A rare, rare breed. As somebody who only ever completes PlusWord on their phone, a format to which it is perfectly tailored, if I ever see it on a full-size computer monitor it reminds me of the giant floor piano in the Tom Hanks film Big: fun to look at, but also strangely grotesque, and surely a total nightmare to play? But they’re out there, the analytics insists, living among us, and seeing all the clues at once.
Cheating Petes
Scum. The lowest of the low. Undeserving of the game, however they manage to rig it in their favour. If I was in Lancaster’s job, I’d ban them and throw away the key. In fact, there’s a five-letter word I can think of for this lot...