MURDL 16

Available free for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Get MURDL 16 from the App Store.

MURDL is the five-letter word game for people who find one board too easy. Every guess you type is played on every board at once, and each board has its own five-letter answer. Solve them all before the guesses run out.

Choose your challenge: 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 boards. One board is the familiar six-guess game; above that, you get five more guesses than boards, so the classic 8-board game gives you 13 guesses and 16 boards gives you 21. Boards stop taking guesses once they are solved, so every word you play has to work for the boards still open.

Three ways to play. Classic keeps the clock off screen. Stopwatch counts up from your first keystroke and keeps your fastest win at every board count. Sprint counts down from 45 seconds per board, adds 10 seconds for every board you solve, and takes away every unfinished board when it reaches zero. In both timed modes the clock waits for your first keystroke and pauses while Help is open, so you can study the boards before you start.

Built for the Mac. Type on your real keyboard from any window. The on-screen keyboard is a small floating window that shows the best result each letter has earned on any board; close it if you do not need it, and MURDL remembers where you put it. Every action has a menu item and a keyboard shortcut, so the whole game can be played without touching the mouse.

See the boards your way. A grid of up to eight boards per row, or one long horizontal strip. Scroll with a trackpad swipe, a scroll wheel, or the arrow keys, which step a highlight from board to board and keep it in view.

Keep score. Every finished game is recorded with its result, score, guesses used, and time. The Scores window shows games played, win percentage, current and best streaks, best score, and best time. Helper Mode, which plays the next unfinished board's answer for you, is recorded as assisted and never counts as a win.

Fresh words, game after game

Starting with version 2.3, MURDL works through its whole list of 2,647 answers before any word comes back, in practice games and in the Daily alike, and no answer is ever repeated within a game. Even in the worst case, starting at any point in the list, this is how long you play before you can see a word again:

For the Daily, read games as days.

No account, no ads, no tracking. Your score book syncs privately through iCloud across your own devices.