A fast, fully offline-capable Progressive Web App for finding valid words from a set of available letters, with Scrabble and NYT Crossplay scoring, crossword pattern matching, and 11 built-in themes.
- Rack search — enter up to 20 available letters; every valid word that can be formed from those tiles is returned
- Wildcard tiles — use
?as a blank tile matching any letter; wildcard-filled letters are highlighted in a distinct colour with a split score display (e.g.NERDY: 9 | 5 ptswhere the blank-filled letter and its zero-value score are shown in the wildcard colour) - Pattern filters — narrow results with three independent fields that can be combined freely:
- Starts With — word must begin with the given letters (e.g.
PRE) - Contains — word must include the given substring (e.g.
ING) - Ends With — word must end with the given letters (e.g.
TION)
- Starts With — word must begin with the given letters (e.g.
- Pattern letters are treated as board tiles (free) and do not consume letters from the rack — enabling correct crossword-style lookups
- Grouped by word length — longest words shown first, each group collapsible
- Sort per group — toggle between A–Z alphabetical and Pts ↓ (highest score first) independently per length group; defaults to highest points
- Length filter chips — filter the visible groups down to a specific word length with one click
- Score range — each group header shows the min–max point range across its words
- Click to copy — tap any word card to copy it to the clipboard; a brief green flash confirms the action
- Scrabble — standard international tile values
- NYT Crossplay — New York Times Crossplay tile values
- Toggle between modes via the ☰ menu; the active mode is persisted to
localStorageand all visible scores update immediately, including the tile rack badges and footer reference key
11 built-in themes, each with a matched font pairing, selectable from the ☰ menu → Theme:
| # | Theme | Vibe | Fonts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Traditional | Warm parchment, classic Scrabble | Playfair Display · DM Sans |
| 2 | Modern / Minimal | Clean, neutral, professional | Inter · JetBrains Mono |
| 3 | Tech / Cyber | Terminal hacker vibe | Share Tech Mono |
| 4 | Fun / Playful | Friendly, casual, creative | Fredoka One · Nunito |
| 5 | Nature / Calm | Relaxing, organic | Lora · Source Sans 3 |
| 6 | SaaS Dashboard | Data-focused, dark | IBM Plex Sans · IBM Plex Mono |
| 7 | Gaming / Immersive | Cinematic, high-contrast | Orbitron · Rajdhani |
| 8 | Reading / Content | Comfortable, warm, readable | Libre Baskerville · Crimson Pro |
| 9 | Solarized | Balanced, easy on eyes | Fira Sans · Fira Code |
| 10 | High Contrast | WCAG AAA accessibility | Atkinson Hyperlegible · Overpass Mono |
| 11 | AMOLED | True black, power-saving | Exo 2 · Roboto Mono |
Theme selection is persisted to localStorage and applied instantly with live-preview swatches in the picker dialog.
- Installable — add to home screen on iOS, Android, and desktop browsers via
manifest.json - Full offline support — service worker (
sw.js) pre-caches all assets on first load using a three-tier strategy:- Cache-first for
dawg.jsonand all 64 font files - Stale-while-revalidate for the app shell (
index.html,app.css,app.js,fonts.css) - Network-first with cache fallback for everything else
- Cache-first for
- Bump
CACHE_VERSIONinsw.jsto invalidate and refresh the cache on new deployments
The app uses the SOWPODS tournament word list — the international competitive Scrabble standard:
- 267,751 valid words, lengths 2–15
- Stored as a Directed Acyclic Word Graph (DAWG) in
dawg.jsonfor fast, memory-efficient searching - The DAWG reduces 589,315 trie nodes to 77,808 nodes (86.8% reduction) via bottom-up suffix merging
- Rack searches are 10–700× faster than scanning a flat word list, with early subtree pruning at every branch
| Structure | Memory | Rack search | startsWith |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat array | ~19 MB | ~21 ms | ~2.6 ms |
| DAWG | ~5.3 MB | ~0.07–2 ms | ~0.3 ms |
To use a different word list, regenerate dawg.json from any newline-separated plain-text file:
python3 build_dawg.py words.txt dawg.jsonbuild_dawg.py builds the trie, minimizes it to a DAWG, verifies all words round-trip correctly, then writes the compact JSON. It requires no third-party Python packages.
| Tile | Scrabble | Crossplay |
|---|---|---|
| A | 1 | 1 |
| B | 3 | 4 |
| C | 3 | 3 |
| D | 2 | 2 |
| E | 1 | 1 |
| F | 4 | 4 |
| G | 2 | 4 |
| H | 4 | 3 |
| I | 1 | 1 |
| J | 8 | 10 |
| K | 5 | 6 |
| L | 1 | 2 |
| M | 3 | 3 |
| N | 1 | 1 |
| O | 1 | 1 |
| P | 3 | 3 |
| Q | 10 | 10 |
| R | 1 | 1 |
| S | 1 | 1 |
| T | 1 | 1 |
| U | 1 | 2 |
| V | 4 | 6 |
| W | 4 | 5 |
| X | 8 | 8 |
| Y | 4 | 4 |
| Z | 10 | 10 |
Blank tiles (?) always score 0 regardless of the letter they represent.
WordPlay/
├── index.html — App shell; all markup, no inline scripts or styles
├── app.css — All styles: 11 theme token blocks + component CSS
├── app.js — All logic: DAWG loader, search engine, UI, themes, menu
├── fonts.css — 64 local @font-face declarations (no Google Fonts)
├── sw.js — Service worker; offline caching strategies
├── manifest.json — PWA manifest for home screen installation
├── dawg.json — Serialised DAWG (2.3 MB; 267,751 words, 77,808 nodes)
├── words.txt — Raw SOWPODS word list (2.6 MB; source for build_dawg.py)
├── build_dawg.py — Python script to rebuild dawg.json from any word list
└── fonts/ — 64 woff2 font files across 26 subdirectories
├── atkinson-hyperlegible/
├── courier-prime/
├── crimson-pro/
├── dm-mono/
├── dm-sans/
├── exo-2/
├── fira-code/
├── fira-sans/
├── fredoka-one/
├── ibm-plex-mono/
├── ibm-plex-sans/
├── inconsolata/
├── inter/
├── jetbrains-mono/
├── libre-baskerville/
├── lora/
├── nunito/
├── orbitron/
├── overpass-mono/
├── playfair-display/
├── rajdhani/
├── roboto-mono/
├── share-tech-mono/
├── source-code-pro/
├── source-sans-3/
└── space-mono/
No build step or dependencies required. Serve the files from any static HTTP server — opening index.html directly as a file:// URL will block the fetch('dawg.json') call due to browser security policy.
# Python (built-in, zero config)
python3 -m http.server 8080
# Node.js
npx serve .# VS Code# Use the "Live Server" extension → right-click index.html → Open with Live ServerThen open http://localhost:8080.
Drop all files (including fonts/, dawg.json, and words.txt) onto any static host:
| Host | Method |
|---|---|
| GitHub Pages | Push to repo; enable Pages from the main branch root |
| Netlify | Drag folder to app.netlify.com/drop |
| Vercel | npx vercel from the project folder |
| Cloudflare Pages | wrangler pages deploy . |
Note:
words.txtis the source used bybuild_dawg.pybut is not required at runtime — the app loadsdawg.jsonexclusively. You can omit it from your deployment to save ~2.6 MB.
- Type your rack into Available Letters. Letters render as interactive tile chips showing their point value in the active scoring mode. Click any chip to remove that letter.
- Use
?for a blank tile. Results that used a blank highlight the wildcard letter and display a split score (full pts | without-blank pts). - Optionally fill in any combination of Starts With, Contains, and Ends With — all three filters are independent and can be used together.
- Press Find Words or hit Enter.
- Results appear grouped by word length (longest first), sorted by highest points by default.
- Use the length chips above the results to filter to a specific word length.
- Toggle A–Z / Pts inside any group header to re-sort that group independently.
- Click a group header to collapse or expand it.
- Click any word card to copy it to the clipboard.
| Item | Action |
|---|---|
| Scoring Mode | Cycles between Scrabble and NYT Crossplay; updates all scores and tile badges live |
| Theme | Opens the theme picker dialog with 11 themes and live-preview colour swatches |
| About WordPlay | Shows app version, active service worker cache key, dictionary stats, and a GitHub link |
Requires a modern browser with ES2020+ and the Cache API:
- Chrome / Edge 90+
- Firefox 90+
- Safari 15.4+ (iOS & macOS)
The color-mix() CSS function used for focus rings requires Chrome 111+, Edge 111+, Firefox 113+, or Safari 16.2+. Older browsers degrade gracefully without the focus-ring glow.
Apache 2.0 — free to use, modify, and distribute.