Trace
Also known as Word deduction and Letter logic
One word is hidden, and every clue on the board is a real word of the same length with two numbers beside it: Shared, how many letters it has in common with the hidden word, and Placed, how many of those are in the same position. Nothing says which letters they are. Build the answer from the clues' own letters until one word fits every count — each board is dealt so only one word does.
How it works
- Find the hidden word. Every clue is a real word of the same length.
- Shared tells you how many letters a clue has in common with the hidden word.
- Placed tells you how many of those are also in the same position.
- Build the word from the letters below. A letter can be used more than once; a letter counts once in Shared for each time both words have it.
- Hints can take out a letter that isn't in the word, or reveal one letter in its place.
Good if you want…
- Pure deduction with words instead of colours
- A puzzle where every clue is on the board from the start
- Working something out on paper over a coffee
How to solve Trace
Read the two numbers together
Shared counts every letter a clue has in common with the hidden word, wherever it sits. Placed counts the ones that are also in the same position, and those are already inside Shared. So a clue showing 3 Shared and 1 Placed has one letter exactly where it belongs and two more that belong somewhere else in the word. When the two numbers are equal, every shared letter of that clue is already in its right slot.
Let the low counts rule letters out
A clue with 1 Shared can hold only one of the answer's letters, so any two of its letters that you suspect cannot both be in. Set that against a clue with a high count and the letters start to fall out. The bank under the board is every clue letter once, so a good share of it — often half or more on the harder tiers — is decoys. Reasoning about which letters are out is usually quicker than guessing which are in.
Read down the columns for Placed
Each clue's letters sit in the column of the answer slot above them, so Placed can be read straight down. A clue with 0 Placed says none of its shared letters is in the column it is shown in. Cross those letters off for those columns, and a letter you know is in the word often has only one column left to go.
Work a board through: PALM
Take the board from the game's own guide: OPAL shows 3 Shared and 0 Placed, OKRA 1 and 0, LOAM 3 and 1, PROM 2 and 2. OKRA shares only one letter, so O and A are not both in the word. OPAL needs three of O, P, A and L, which forces P and L in with one of O and A. LOAM needs three of L, O, A and M, so M is in too. OKRA's single shared letter is that O or A, which puts K and R out.
PROM now shares P and M. If O were in the word, PROM would share three, so O is out and A is in. PROM places both of its letters, so P comes first and M last. OPAL places none, so A is not third: A is second, L third, and the word is PALM. Most boards fall to the same steps, only with more letters in the bank.
Common mistakes
- Forgetting that Placed letters count in Shared too. A clue with 2 Shared and 2 Placed has no other letter in the word.
- Counting a repeated letter twice. A letter counts in Shared only as often as both words hold it, so a clue with two Ls shares one L with a word that has one.
- Checking a word that fits most of the clues. It has to fit every count on the board, and a word that doesn't is a miss on your result.
- Treating the bank as the answer's letters. It holds every letter of every clue, and the answer uses only some of them.
Where Trace comes from
Trace belongs to the family of letter-deduction games that grew out of Jotto, a word game from the 1950s in which each guess is answered with a count of letters in common, and Bulls and Cows, the older pencil-and-paper game that scores right digits in the right and wrong places. Those games are played guess by guess. Trace gives you every clue at the start, so the whole puzzle is the reasoning.
Trace questions
How do the difficulties differ?
Easy hides a four-letter word behind four clues, with five or six letters in the bank. Its first clue has three Shared and three Placed, so only one letter needs changing. Another clue has at least two Placed to help you find which one. Medium and Hard hide five-letter words behind three clues, with banks of eight or nine and ten or eleven letters. Expert hides a six-letter word behind three clues and eleven or twelve letters, and its answer can repeat a letter.
What do the hints do?
Remove takes one letter that isn't in the word out of the bank, and out of any slot holding it. Reveal writes one letter of the answer into its slot and locks it there. Each board starts with two free hints, shared between the two. A Reveal never presses Check for you.
Does a wrong word cost anything?
A word that doesn't fit every clue counts as a miss on your result, but the round carries on and your letters stay so you can change them. A word that fits every count but isn't one Trace recognises costs nothing at all.
Can more than one word fit?
No. Every board is checked against a list of more than sixteen thousand words, including plurals and other forms, so only one recognised word fits every clue.
Trace in Winters Puzzles
Trace is one of 40 puzzles in Winters Puzzles, so it sits alongside Word Search, Silhouette, Word Dominoes and everything else in the app rather than being a download of its own. It counts towards your stats and streak like any other puzzle. It also has a published board in Pip’s dailies, with earlier dates available in the archive.
Play Trace.
Free on iPhone and iPad, with 39 other puzzles alongside it. Or play it in your browser — no download, nothing to sign up for.
