← Back to the game shelf

A little play goes a long way.

Petalwords

Opening the petals…

A GOLDENSUN.FUN CLASSIC

Spell words from the petals, always with the center.

Spell words from the letters on a flower's petals, always using the center letter.

No download. No account needed. Your game saves automatically on this device.

How to play Petalwords

The goal

Make as many words as you can from the flower’s letters. Every word must use the center letter. Find them all to grow the whole Garden.

The rules

  1. Use the center. Every word must include the letter in the middle of the flower.
  2. Only these letters. Use only the flower’s letters. Any letter can be used more than once.
  3. Long enough. Words need at least 3 letters on a 5-letter flower, 4 on a 7-letter flower, and 5 on a 9-letter flower.
  4. Real words. A word must be in our word list, and each word counts once. No flower has an S.
  5. Scoring. A word of the shortest length scores 1 point. Longer words score 1 point per letter.
  6. Full Bloom. A word that uses every letter in the flower scores double. Every flower has at least one.
  7. Wildflowers 🌼 are real but rare words. In free play and duels they score as bonus points, unless you turn them off when you start the round. The Garden only needs common words, so a Wildflower never counts as missed. The daily counts common words only.

Ranks

Your points grow the plant: Seed, Sprout, Leaf, Bud, Bloom, Bouquet, and Garden for finding every common word. Your words bar shows how many you have, such as 9 of 40 words, with any Wildflowers counted separately (+2 🌼). Each rank has its own little plant on the stem above the flower, from a sprout to a whole sunflower.

Ways to play

  • Daily: the same 7-letter flower for everyone, with no clock and no Wildflowers. Come back to it all day, even after playing something else; at midnight it closes and shows the words you missed.
  • Archive: play any past daily from the calendar. It keeps your best rank for that day but never changes your streak.
  • Free play: a 5-, 7- or 9-letter flower, untimed or with a clock, with or without Wildflowers.
    • Sprint: 2 or 5 minutes.
    • Watering Can: the water drains while you play, and each word pours some back (3 seconds per point, so long words pour the most). The sun gets hotter every minute. The round ends when the can runs dry.
  • Duel: two players on one device take turns on the same flower and clock. Words both players find score for neither, unless you switch that off.

After a free-play round or a duel, Share sends a link that opens the same flower, clock and Wildflowers setting, so a friend can try it. A daily’s share card shows your rank and points, never the letters.

Statistics and My garden

Statistics shows your daily streak, Gardens and Full Blooms, your best scores for each flower and clock, and duel wins. My garden plants one flower for each of the last 28 dailies, grown to the rank you reached that day.

Entering words

  • Tap the petals and the center to spell a word, then press Enter. Delete removes the last letter, and Shuffle moves the petals around (the center stays put).
  • Type on a keyboard: the flower’s letters (others are ignored), Enter to submit, Backspace to delete, Space to shuffle, and Escape to clear the word.

Keyboard

Tab to the flower, then use the arrow keys to move around the petals. Space adds the focused letter; Enter adds it, or enters the word once you have started one.

Settings

  • Word counts shows how many words are left of each length, or of each length and first letter. Finished rows fade as you go.
  • Found words sorts your list A–Z or by length.
  • Appearance offers seven flowers (each readable in light and dark), four petal shapes, rainbow petals, a meadow, a flowerpot or a plain scene, and two letter styles.

Tips

  • Look for common endings: -ING, -ED, -ER and -LY grow lots of words when the flower has them.
  • Shuffle when you’re stuck. Seeing the petals in a new order often shakes a word loose.

Questions

Do I need an account? No. Your game saves on this device automatically. An optional account adds cloud saves across devices.

Where do the words come from? Valid words come from the public-domain ENABLE word list. The words each flower counts on come from Alan Beale’s 12dicts lists: 3of6game, which is public domain, and everyday forms such as PLANKED from 2of12inf, which builds on Kevin Atkinson’s AGID and Princeton’s WordNet. Their licence notices are at the top of the word list. Thank you, Alan and Kevin.

KEEP WANDERING

All games