Reduction, an anagram chain with a hidden word

Reduction is a chain of about a dozen clued answers with a second puzzle inside it. Every time a step takes a letter away, that letter is kept, and the letters taken away, read in order down the chain, spell a hidden word.

How it plays

Each answer is an anagram of those next to it with a letter added or removed. Steps that only add or drop a letter don't count, so REVEAL to LEAVE is a step and LEAVER to LEVER is not.

The chain rises and falls like any other, so some steps add a letter and some take one away. Only the letters that go count towards the hidden word, and it fills in as you solve.

The hidden word works in both directions. Solving the chain spells it out, and once you can guess it, it tells you which letter has to go at each step that shortens.

A worked example

This chain was made up for this page and is shorter than a real Reduction. It comes from no day's puzzle.

1. They twinkle at nightSTARSthe first answer
2. Painting, music and the likeARTSthe S goes
3. Sunday dinner, oftenROASTan O arrives
4. Sewer rodentsRATSthe O goes
5. Took a seatSATthe R goes
6. Things worn on headsHATSan H arrives
7. What a fire leavesASHthe T goes

Four steps here take a letter away: the S from STARS, the O from ROAST, the R from RATS and the T from HATS. Read in order, S, O, R and T spell SORT, the hidden word. The steps that add a letter, the O in ROAST and the H in HATS, play no part in it.

Tips

• Keep an eye on the hidden word. Two or three of its letters are often enough to guess the rest.
• Once you have the hidden word, each shortening step has only one letter it can drop.
• A letter can arrive at one step and leave at a later one, as the O does in the example.
• A dropped letter is marked only once the answers on both sides of its step are solved, so the hidden word is never given away early.

Reduction 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.

Play today's puzzles

On the App Store and Google Play.

The other games

• Fold
• Soufflé
• Flip
• Roux
• Double Yolk
• Scratch
• Fork
• Lattice

All nine are explained side by side on How to play, and every answer comes from the word list.