TIPS

GLOSSARY

Field
Any single grid of letters, containing a start letter at the center, and 1 or more failsafes stemming from the start letter. Width and height, in terms of tiles, are odd-numbered.

Valid word
Any word recognized by the game, which can be entered for points. All valid words are at least 3 letters long, but this can change with MWL. See the section on this for more info.

Start letter
The center of each field, and the first letter you must use in order to spell a word.

Failsafe
A randomly-picked, guaranteed word hidden within the field. Normal and Hard modes have 1 per field, while Easy has 2.

Minimum word length (MWL)
The minimum number of letters needed in a word for it to be considered valid. In all official game modes, this is 3; but in custom modes, this can be increased.

Tile
Mostly synonymous with "letter"; typically specifies a unit of the field before its letter has been chosen.

Control scheme
Any of the 4 ways to control the game: numpad, jump, type, and mouse.

Letter distribution
Refers to the function used to randomly pick letters for tiles on the field not already taken by failsafes. See the section on this for more info.

Double/triple-hop
It's a secret.

VALID WORDS

The full version of WordHopper contains ~60,000 valid words; this is enough to cover the most common words in American English, and then some. The word list excludes the following categories:

• Proper nouns* (including names; sorry, your buddy Eric is invalid)
• Acronyms (like DOA, ROI, CNC)
• Most abbreviations (like appt, bldg, etc.)
• Company names, trademarks, etc.
• Slurs, swears, and most sex-related terms (you can't make the rabbit say "fuck". i am so sorry)

*: Continents, languages, and countries are the only valid proper nouns. Their usage is limited; the list of languages and countries are based on ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166 respectively, with some corners cut due to the game's lack of spaces. Additionally, while demonyms for the continents are valid, demonyms for countries are not.

SCORING

Scoring for each word operates using the following formula:

(sum of letter scores) × 2^{(word length - 3)}

As shown by the exponent, the game strongly rewards longer words.

Each letter's score is roughly based on their distribution across the word list, with the more common ones yielding less points:

Letter	Score
A	100
B	400
C	200
D	100
E	100
F	400
G	200
H	400
I	100
M	200
N	100
O	100
P	200
Q	800
R	100
S	100
T	100
U	200
V	400
W	800
X	800
Y	400
Z	800

CUSTOM MODE STRINGS

On the results screen of a custom mode, you'll see a line of text formatted like this:

<gamemode>, # SEC, # MWL, #1×#2 FIELD, #1×[#2-#3] FS, (N/O)LD

Here's each part broken down:

• <gamemode>: self-explanatory.
• # SEC: the time limit, in seconds.
• # MWL: the minimum word length.
• #1×#2 FIELD: the field width (#1) and height (#2).
• #1×[#2-#3] FS: the number of failsafes (#1), their minimum length (#2), and their max length (#3).
• (N/O)LD: the letter distribution; NLD means "new letter distribution", OLD means "old letter distribution"

LETTER DISTRIBUTION

Letter distribution is split into two different types: old (the method used in v1.00), and new (the method introduced in v2.00). Here's how each of them works:

Old letter distribution
Letters are picked based on how frequently they appear across the entire word list, with the exception of the first letter of each word. For example, "E"s show up more often than "Z"s.

New letter distribution
First, in the 8 tiles surrounding the starting tile (aside from those already taken by a failsafe), letters are chosen based on their frequency as the second letter following the starting letter. For example, if the start letter is "Q", you may see more "U"s surrounding the start than normal.

Second, the rest of the field (again, barring any tiles taken by a failsafe) is filled with letters chosen based on their frequency in just the list of words starting with the start letter. Let's pretend, statistically, that words starting with "A" have more "B"s in them than words starting with "C"; this means that, in a field where the start letter is "A", you might see more "B"s in the field than if the start letter was "C".