How to Play the Keysmash Game

Keysmash is a vowel-fill word puzzle: read a themed set of words with their vowels removed, and type the missing vowels back into place. This guide covers the rules, the controls, and the strategy that makes hard sets fall apart.

The puzzle

A Keysmash puzzle is a themed set of words. Every word is shown as a skeleton — its consonants, with a blank in place of each removed vowel. An N-word puzzle has exactly N words to solve; the daily four-word set is a quick warm-up, and the nine-word set is a proper sitting. The theme at the top of the set is the same for every word and is your single most useful clue.

The rules

There is really one rule, and the theme makes it solvable:

Fill every blank with a vowel. Each blank is one of the five vowels — a, e, i, o, or u. The letter y is always treated as a consonant, so it appears in the skeleton and is never blanked.
Every word belongs to the theme. All the words in a set share one theme, so reading it first tells you what family of words you are decoding.

Because each puzzle is generated from public coordinates (its length plus a date or number), it is fully reproducible — the same puzzle number always gives the same themed words.

The controls

The puzzle is built for touch first, and works with a keyboard too:

Tap a blank, type a vowel. Tap any blank to select it, then type or tap a vowel. On a phone a five-key vowel keypad appears under the puzzle so you never fight the system keyboard.
Auto-advance. When you enter a vowel, the next blank in the word is selected for you automatically, so you can fly through a word you know. Filling the last blank in a word moves you to the next unsolved word.
Delete and retype. A wrong vowel does not lock; use Delete (or Backspace) to clear a blank and try another vowel. A word only locks in as solved when every one of its blanks is correct.

Hints and reset

Two controls sit under every puzzle. Hint reveals the next missing vowel of the word you are working on and counts toward your stats; it is the fastest way to break a logjam. Reset clears everything you have typed so you can start the set fresh. Hints are unlimited, so you are never truly stuck.

Winning and sharing

You win the moment every word in the set is solved. The puzzle shows your finish time, how many hints you used, and your current daily streak; completing any daily length keeps the streak alive for that day. A share button copies a compact, spoiler-free summary of your result — your time, hint count, and an emoji grid showing each word's blanks — without giving the answers away.

Strategy tips

These are the quick pointers. For a deeper walkthrough of the solving techniques — hearing the consonants, reading the blanks as a shape, and leaning on how English uses vowels — read the full Keysmash strategy guide.

Read the theme first

Every word in a Keysmash puzzle belongs to one theme, and that theme is the single most useful clue you have. Before touching a blank, read the theme and let it prime the kind of words you are looking for — once your brain is in the right category, the consonant skeletons snap into words far faster.

Say the consonants out loud

A skeleton like "pl_n_t" is hard to see and easy to hear. Sounding out the consonants, then trying the theme's vocabulary against them, turns a jumble of letters into a short list of candidates. "Planet" falls out the moment you pair the sounds with a space theme.

Count the blanks

The number of vowel blanks tells you how many vowels the word has, and their spacing tells you the shape. A single blank between two consonants is almost always a, e, i, o, or u in an obvious spot; two blanks in a row point to vowel pairs like ea, oo, or ai. Use the pattern to narrow your guess.

Fill the easy words first

You do not have to solve the words in order. Skip straight to the skeletons you recognise, lock them in, and let the theme sharpen with each answer. A couple of confident solves often reveal the angle on the ones that looked impossible a minute ago.

Use common vowel patterns

English leans on a handful of vowel habits: most words have at least one e, doubled vowels are usually oo or ee, and a lone vowel before a final consonant is often the short a, e, or i sound. When you are unsure, try the most common vowel for the pattern before the rare one.

Spend a hint to break a logjam

Hints are unlimited, and a single revealed vowel can unlock a word that unlocks the theme. If one skeleton has you completely stuck, reveal one vowel with the hint button and let the rest of the word — and often the rest of the set — come into focus.

Ready to play? Start with today's four-word set, warm up with the puzzle library, or revisit the archive. Want to solve faster? See the strategy guide.