Pheasant CouchSYNTAX: ZERO
WORD OVERCLOCK // Y2K TERMINAL
Spell fast, spend letters, beat the clock
Syntax: Zero is a free word game from Pheasant Couch Productions. It runs in your browser: nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.
The clock
You start with 60 seconds. Every word you get right adds two more, each +5s tile in it adds five, and cracking the bounty adds eight. The clock never holds more than 99 seconds, and when it hits zero the run is over.
Words
Three letters or more, from any tiles on the board, in any order: they don’t have to touch. Common endings count too (-S, -ES, -ED, -ING, -ER, -ERS, -LY and -EST on a word the game knows). Each word scores once per run.
Points
Every letter has a value: the common ones are worth 10, Q and Z are worth 100. Five letters or more adds 40. Then the combo multiplies it all. Each word raises the combo by 0.25x, up to 5x, and a word the game doesn’t know drops it back to 1x.
Special tiles
2X doubles the whole word, and two of them make it 4X. +5s adds five seconds to the clock. GLITCH adds 40 points and an extra 0.25x of combo. Used tiles are replaced as soon as the word lands.
The bounty cipher
One cyber word hides in every board, with its first and last letters showing (and the middle one, on six-letter words). All of its letters are always somewhere on the board. Spell it for +150 points and +8 seconds, and a new one takes its place, never a word you’ve already played that run.
Scramble
Stuck? Scramble deals a whole new board for 10 points. The bounty stays the same, and its letters are dealt in again.
The daily leaderboard
Pick a handle before you start, and your best score of the day goes on the board. It resets at midnight Eastern time. Every run is replayed on our server, letter by letter, before it counts, so the scores up there were really played.
Fair play
Handles are 2 to 12 letters, numbers, spaces, dots, dashes or underscores. Rude ones get turned away, and anything that slips through gets deleted. The manual doesn’t stop the clock once a run has started.
Controls
Click or tap tiles, or just type: a letter picks a matching tile (special tiles first), Backspace takes the last one back, Esc clears the word, and Enter executes it. Click a letter in the word bar to cut the word back to there.