Niner Word Game

Niner is a word game where the objective is to form as many words as possible from a grid of nine letters. Each letter tile can only be used once and the center letter must always be present.
Words must have at least four letters. There is always at least one word containing all nine letters.
Niner supports wiktionary lookup by long-clicking words, making it not only challenging and addictive but also educational. A great way to extend your vocabulary!
© 2011 Anders Kallin - http://www.grammaticussw.com
Recent changes
Version 1.5.0
- Wordlists totally reworked!
- Added explanations to why some words are invalid
- Added possibility to suggest words to improve wordlist
- Fixed ICS Action Bar support
- Corrected crash for large wiki lookups
- Fixed wiki caching
- Added "% solved" info to saved games
- Fixed help text regarding saved games
- Now reacts to volume control
How to play
Getting started
Start a new game by pressing the "New game" button on the main screen.
The game consists of a grid of nine tiles with letters. To enter a word, tap the tiles for each letter in the word and then press the Submit button. The center tile must be present in the word.
The Action Bar
The Action Bar on the game screen lets you:
- Save the game
- Finish your current game and see the words you've missed
- Start a new game
- Show this help text
Advanced features
Viewing statistics
Clicking "Show statistics" on the main screen lets you view the results of past games. Only corrected or 100% solved games are included in the statistics. You can click the yellow dots in the graph to see details about that specific game.
The red line shows a "trend line", which is simply the mean value of five or so games.
Clicking on words
Clicking on one of your words enters the word again. This can be
useful for instance if you want to enter the words
WILL
,
WILLING
and
WILLINGLY
. Simply submit
WILL
, then click
WILL
and add
ING
and so on.
Long click – Wiktionary look-up!
Do you wonder what some of the words mean? Simply long click the word and you will get a Wiktionary look-up!
Getting explanations for invalid words
If a word is not accepted you can click the button saying "Why invalid?" to (hopefully) get an explanation of why the word is invalid.
If the word is invalid due to it being an inflection (i.e. not the base form) you will be informed so. It may also be a "valid" word that has been removed since it was not part of TWL. If the word is not known or if you feel it has been wrongly classified, you may suggest the word for inclusion in a later version.
Searching wiktionary
There is a search icon on the Action Bar on the main screen. Pressing the search icon will present a search field where you can enter any word and get its definition from wiktionary.org. The current wordlist controls which localized wiktionary to search. E.g. using the English wordlist will result in searches on en.wiktionary.org.
The search functionality is also available via the search button on devices with hardware search buttons.
Saved games
Clicking "Saved games" on the main screen brings up a list of games you have saved. In this list you can either click a game to continue playing it, or you can long click the game to delete it.
The game list provides information regarding the game number, the date the game was saved and also how much of the game is solved.
Valid words
The wordlist used is a subset of TWL where only the basic form of a word is accepted.
Here is a list of accepted word forms (for the English wordlist):
- Nouns – only singular form is accepted, e.g. table but not tables. No proper nouns (names, nouns with capital letter)
- Verbs – only base forms (infinitive), e.g. deny, but not denies (third person), nor denying (present participle))
- Adjectives – only base forms, e.g. happy, but not happier
- Interjections
- Numerals
- Adverbs
- Prepositions
- Conjunctions
- Pronouns
Some plural forms are accepted:
- Where the plural form has a meaning in its own right. For
example
chills
meaning a feeling of being cold, orheads
as in heads or tails. - Plurale
tantum – words that only exist in plural forms, like
scissors
.
Settings
The game settings view accessible from the main screen allows you to control some of the features of the game.
- The wordlist to use
Currently English and Swedish wordlists are available - Which orientation to use
The default is Portrait, but if you have a hardware keyboard you might want to use Landscape or Automatic - Whether or not to play a mildly annoying sound when you submit the words
- Whether or not to vibrate on invalid submissions
- Whether or not to use haptic feedback when clicking the tiles
- Whether or not to keep the screen on while playing a game.
- Whether or not to send anonymous statistics to google