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!

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

Note: On devices with hardware buttons you may have to push the Menu button to see all options.

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, or heads 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