Words that are worth something

Shake the bag and letter tiles tumble out. Every tile has a point value. Easy letters are worth a little. Tricky letters are worth a lot.

Build a real word, add up its points yourself, and beat the target. The longest word is not always the best one.

  1. Watch How to Play to learn about bonus squares.
  2. Build a word, add it up, and type the total.
  3. Win 20 bags to unlock the Prize Vault.

My badges

0 of 20 bags won

Teacher note

This game mixes spelling, mental math, and optimizing: finding the best choice instead of the first one. Students build a word from random tiles, add up the letter values themselves (including double and triple squares from Level 2 on), and must reach a target. Often a short word on a bonus square beats a longer word.

A word that is not in the dictionary costs nothing and the student can try again, since finding words takes exploring. The math is different: if the word is real but the typed total is wrong, the page shows the correct adding, that bag does not count, and a new bag arrives. So guessing a number does not pay.

The built-in dictionary has about 36,000 words of 3 to 7 letters. Rude and potty words were removed, though no filter is perfect, so please tell students to report anything odd. Students need 20 winning bags across four levels to unlock the prize video. When the video ends, all progress resets to zero. Progress is saved in the browser on that one Chromebook only. No supplies are needed.