How Wordship plays.

Two players. Each places five words on a private 10×10 grid — a fleet of word-shaped ships. Then they take turns guessing one letter at one coordinate against each other's grids. The first to fully reveal the opponent's fleet wins.

Every match is a one-of-one. The puzzle you hunt is the one your opponent just composed.

Each player's fleet must obey:

Five words

Exactly five, no more, no fewer.

Twenty-five letters total

The five word lengths sum to 25.

Three to seven letters each

No word shorter than 3 or longer than 7.

Horizontal or vertical

Each word lies in a single row or column. No diagonals.

No overlaps

Words may touch but never share a cell.

Real English words

Validated against the TWL06 Scrabble dictionary.

On your turn, you fire one guess: a letter, and a coordinate on the opponent's 10×10 grid. The grid answers in one of five colors — empty water reads as a quiet gray void, while a hit on a ship reveals itself by degree.

You may guess any cell on any turn. Previously-guessed cells stay colored — the board accumulates as a record of what you've learned.

Suppose the opponent's fleet contains WIDE placed horizontally on row 1 — the letter W at (0,1), I at (1,1), D at (2,1), E at (3,1). Three guesses of the letter D, at three different coordinates, return three different colors:

A fourth guess of a different letter that lands on a ship but isn't in that ship's word at all returns Dud— the cell darkens and the letter shows faded. You've struck a ship, but that letter isn't the right one for this word.

Blue arrives later — when the final cell of a word turns Green and all four cells of the word flip to Blue at once. The ship is sunk.

The first player to sink all five of the opponent's words wins. Two stats are recorded for each game: the winner's guess count, and the wall-clock time from first guess to last. Lower is sharper.