7 Letters, words against the clock
Seven letters, ninety seconds. Make as many words as you can with them, three letters or more. A word that uses all seven scores triple. It comes from verbal fluency tasks, with published norms by age (Tombaugh et al., 1999).
- Verbal fluency
- Word retrieval
- Mental flexibility
Play it live
Make words of 3 letters or more.
Use each letter at most once per word, a word with all seven letters scores triple, and you have 90 seconds.
Type on your keyboard, Enter to submit
What it asks of you
7 Letters asks for word retrieval, how easily words come to you when you search for them. You know thousands of words, and the game is about finding them on demand.
It also asks you to switch. When one family of words runs dry, you jump to another ending or another sound, fast.
How to play
- Seven letters appear, the same for every player that day.
- Tap the letters, or type them, to build a word of three letters or more.
- Submit it. If it is in the list of the day, it scores one point.
- Each letter can be used once per word. A word with all seven letters scores three.
- You have ninety seconds, and your score is your total of points.
The research behind it
Verbal fluency tasks ask people to produce as many words as they can within a time limit, and Tombaugh and colleagues published norms for them by age and education (Tombaugh et al., 1999). 7 Letters keeps that core, words on demand, with a set of letters in place of a category.
Practice on a word task makes you quicker at that task (Simons et al., 2016). You start to spot endings, small words hidden in big ones, letters that pair well. That is the skill growing.
On your weekly card
7 Letters is a bonus game. In the app it comes back in the rotation of the bonus of the day, with a new set of letters every day.
It never counts on your weekly card. Beat your own score, or compare with friends on the same letters.
Questions
Which words count?
Words of three letters or more from the list of the day, using each letter at most once.
Are the letters the same for everyone?
Yes, everyone playing in the same language gets the same seven letters that day.
Where is the full test?
The verbal fluency test page explains the format and the research.
Sources
- Tombaugh T.N., Kozak J., Rees L. (1999). Normative data stratified by age and education for two measures of verbal fluency. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology 14(2), 167 to 177. doi.org/10.1093/arclin/14.2.167
- Simons D.J., Boot W.R., Charness N. et al. (2016). Do brain training programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17(3), 103 to 186. doi.org/10.1177/1529100616661983
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