Letterhorn / How to play
How to play Letterhorn
Letterhorn is a free daily word game you play in your browser, with no download and no account needed. Every day there's a new mountain, and everyone climbs exactly the same one with exactly the same letters.
Spelling a word
- Drag your finger (or mouse) across touching tiles to spell a word. Tiles touch up, down, sideways and diagonally.
- Lift to play it. Words need at least three letters and must be in the dictionary. Each tile can be used once per word.
- Backtrack by sliding back onto the previous tile if you change your mind mid-word.
An invalid word costs nothing: the board shakes and you try again.
Scoring and the climb
Every tile carries its Scrabble value, from 1 for common letters like E and S up to 10 for Q and Z. A word climbs its total letter points multiplied by its length, in meters. CAT is 3 + 1 + 1 = 5 points × 3 letters = 15 m. A long word with a high-value letter can climb more than ten short ones.
When you play a word, its tiles disappear, the tiles above fall down, and new letters drop in from your bag.
Your bag of 130 tiles
You start each climb with 130 tiles in the same proportions as a Scrabble set: 16 E, 12 A, 12 I, 10 O, 8 each of N, R and T, and a single J, K, Q, X and Z. The 25 on the board come out of that bag, and the bag never refills. The letters-left counter shows the tiles on the board plus those still in the bag.
How a climb ends
- Summit: your total reaches the mountain's height.
- No words left: there's no word anywhere on the board. Letterhorn checks this for you after every word.
- Give up: you can turn back at any time, and Letterhorn shows you a word you could still have played.
One ranked climb a day
Your first climb of the day is the ranked one, and it's saved as you go, so closing the page doesn't lose it. A new mountain arrives at midnight in your time zone. The mountains cycle through twelve real peaks, from Yr Wyddfa (1,085 m) up to Everest (8,849 m).
Leaderboards
Climbers who reached the summit rank first, ordered by fewest words. Everyone else ranks by the height they reached. When you finish, you see your place and what share of climbers you beat. Past days stay on the board, and you can tap any climb to watch a word-by-word replay. Today's replays unlock once your own climb is in.
The weekly board covers Monday to Sunday and ranks players by climbs played, then summits, then fewest total words.
Friends and leagues
Pick a name to get your own six-character friend code. Share it, or add a friend's, to filter any leaderboard to just your friends and see your head-to-head record. A league is a private leaderboard for a group: create one, share its join code, and it appears as a filter on every board.
Practice
Practice lets you replay any mountain from the last 30 days, unranked, as often as you like. Today's mountain only unlocks for practice after your ranked climb is in, so nobody can scout the board first.
Your streak
Your streak counts summits on consecutive days. Statistics are kept on your device. To carry them to another device, copy your account key from the menu.