Lattice, a grid of anagram steps
Lattice is a grid of sixteen answers, four across and four down, each with a crossword-style clue. Every answer is one step from all of the answers next to it, above, below and to either side.
How it plays
Adjoining answers are anagrams of each other with a letter added or removed. Steps that only add or drop a letter don't count.
Each answer in the middle of the grid has four neighbours and has to be a legal step from all of them. The links at an answer also change a different letter each, so no answer is surrounded by four versions of the same change.
That makes Lattice the most tightly knit of the nine games. It takes longer than a chain, and every answer you solve gives you two, three or four places to go next.
A worked example
This grid was made up for this page. It is three by three where a real Lattice is four by four, and it comes from no day's puzzle.
Way through a fenceGATE
Where actors standSTAGE
ReceivesGETS
Drink with sconesTEA
Has a mealEATS
Put downSET
Good friendMATE
Sides in a matchTEAMS
Stalk of a flowerSTEM
Read across the top row: GATE gains an S for STAGE, and STAGE loses its A for GETS. Read down the middle column: STAGE loses its G for EATS, and EATS gains an M for TEAMS. At EATS the four links change four different letters, a G above, an M below, an S to the left and an A to the right.
Tips
- Start at a corner. A corner answer has only two neighbours, so it is the easiest to pin down from what is around it.
- When an answer in the middle is solved, try its four neighbours at once. Each is that word with one letter more or one fewer.
- If two neighbours of a blank are solved, the blank has to be one step from both, and the keyboard narrows the letters to suit.
- The anagram rack helps most here, because the same handful of letters runs through the whole grid.
Lattice in the day's four
Omeletter sets four puzzles a day, chosen from its nine games, and every game comes round at least once in any three days. New puzzles appear at 05:00 UTC, which is mid-afternoon in Sydney and early morning in London.
You start with fifty hints in the app and five on the website, and you earn another for every puzzle you solve. On this website you can play today and the two days before it. The app keeps every day you open while it is free.
On the App Store and Google Play.
The other games
All nine are explained side by side on How to play, and every answer comes from the word list.