Tips perfectwords

DEFINITIONS

I've written these tips using the terms I use for the various parts of this game. In most cases these will match those in the official rules but where they don't or where they are not mentioned in the rules then here is a quick overview of my thinking:

WORD TILES - the single word tiles available at the top of the screen to be placed in your grid. CLUE - a placed word tile in your grid. Once placed it becomes a clue to help guess the word, term, or phase you are thinking of for that arrow tile on your grid. ARROW TILE - a tile without a word but instead showing one or two numbered beach umbrellas at 90 degree angles. They are numbered 1 to 10 and once all of them are placed and all have at least two words adjacent to all their arrows, the game will shift to the final phase of guessing. PHASE - The game has two phases, starting in placement phase and only transitions to the final phase once all arrow tiles are placed properly (see ARROW TILE above and how to control this transition in ARROW TILES below). WORD CHAIN - two or more word tiles placed adjacently to one another on your grid. GRID - the uniform but unseen grid for placing word and arrow tiles on. INTENDED - the word or short term you are wanting the other player to guess as identical to yours* when you combine two or more words together.

BEST CHANCE AT A HIGH SCORE

Clearly having a similar age, background and cultural references to the other player will improve your chances of guessing the same terms or words immensely.

If there are notable differences between the players, then avoid cultural or historical terms/words as your intended answer. Not everyone will know references to Joey in Friends, but most people around the world who speak/read English will know about Micky Mouse or even more universally about common human experiences like seeing a Blue Sky or Moonlight night. So linking clues and placing arrow tiles for intended terms like these will help.

This game perhaps works best/only for an English speaking player set from a westernised culture.

Avoid trending intended terms like pop culture or news stories, especially if playing over a number of days as the guessing phase may not happen for sometime and so the thinking behind this may no longer be relevant.

WORD TILES

Generally at least some of the words offered as clues will have a relationship between them - for example you may see Evil, and Malevolent appearing at the start, or during, the placement phase.

If you see a relationship of between the clue words emerging, especially if early on, then try to place your arrow tiles so they end up sharing the same word(s) which a most universal to that relationship. In the example here of Evil and Malevolent, having two arrows including the same word Evil in their chain of clues would be useful.

Word tiles only appear as they are used and do not complete an arrow tile chain until they are joined by another word. Use this to cycle through more clue words early in the game by placing one or more single words on their own outside pointing branches. General descriptive words like colours or characteristics, i.e. male or female, are best suited to these single word chains as they are more easily joined by other words when you come to complete the term chain of words later on.\

It is better to control when you move to the next phase (guessing) by completing any single word arrow chains with an additional word, rather than prolonging the placement phase and adding more words to an already well defined arrow chain.

Fewer (2 word tiles) clues should be used for terms where you and what you think the other player will be certain on. For example Relationship and Alcohol would most likely, almost universally be guessed as Addiction or Addict. But adding the clue Group or Gathering might push westernised cultures towards the term

ARROW TILES

Remember, as mentioned above for the word tiles, you can slow the pace of the game to some extent by placing more and more clue words on an existing arrow tile chain, even if they start to become less related to one another, they will still be clear overall. This is better than starting a new chain later in the first phase, or adding a very unrelated word to an existing chain.

Rotating the arrow tiles is good practice to avoid unintentional joining, or to increase the branching. Use the arrows to aim for more of a crossword layout, with perhaps 2 or 3 centrally shared words in the branching chains, rather than a uniform grid like a word jumble where all the words are shared in most of the chains.

GRID

The game operates on a grid, so careful placement of the arrow tiles to avoid combining unrelated but previously placed words, especially where you are forced to join two exisiting words with a gap word - the existing words will have been placed for their own chain leading to an obvious answer, so the chances of a gap word being beneficial and universal to both are slim.

So plan your grid beforehand and for beginners try a more spread out branching grid where you can limit the number of words for each chain.