How to Play Parseword: Tips and tricks

Four years after creating the smash hit Wordle, creator Josh Wardle returned with the intriguing and tricky Parsewords.

Built with collaborators, Parseword is an attempt to make cryptic crosswords easier to understand. If you're unfamiliar, a cryptic crossword is a puzzle where each clue is the puzzle itself.

"Cryptics are beautiful and rich puzzles but are notoriously hard to learn," the game's about page reads.

The Parseword website offers plenty in the way of easing your journey into the world of cryptics. There are tutorials, starter puzzles, helpful videos and explanatory hints with every puzzle (if you want).

If you don't want to parse through all of that information, here's a simple guide to help you get going.

How to play

Before we get going, the Parseword site is very beginner-friendly. The tutorial is generous, the videos explain different concepts, and a pack of start puzzles introduces different keywords to help you understand the variety of ways a cryptic clue can be solved.

The goal of the game is to create a simile. You will see a series of words and one underlined word. One half of the puzzle is your clue words, and the other half is the word you're trying to analogize.

Here's an example: "Beat without a: risk."

You need to turn the first half into a word similar to risk. In this example, selecting the 3 words deletes the a from beat, turning it into bet.

It may not be immediately intuitive, but you need some cleverness and knowledge of the keywords for how you can combine and replace words to reach the end result.

Fortunately, the entire project is designed to help you learn over time and get better at the game as it introduces its concepts and terminology.

Understanding keywords

Keywords are important for Parseword, as the different keywords are how you solve the clue. These include words like "replacements" or "container."

As an example, a replacement means you can swap a word or phrase with a synonym or an abbreviation. So, 'time' could swap to 'T' or 'scheme' gets replaced by 'plot.' Containers insert a word or phrase into another one.

There are a number of different keywords to understand, from "replacements" to "containers." Containers are harder to intuit, but, for example, you could have this setup: M, in, Poe's verses.

If you select all three words on the left side, it would read as M in Poes, meaning the M gets inserted into Poe's for the word poems, a simile of verses.

There are 9 keywords: Delection, Container, Selection, Reverse, Hidden, Join, Anagram, Homophone, and Translation. Understanding these will help you grok how to solve Parseword.

Modes

Like Wordle, Parseword is a daily puzzle. It has three game modes: learn, play, and challenge.

Learn mode provides definitions for words and keyword suggestions that hint at how to solve the puzzle. There's also the hint button.

Play mode hides the definition and features no starting hints.

Experienced solvers can try challenge mode, where the solution length and indicator information are hidden.

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