Frequently asked questions

When you're stuck, you can use the 'reveal letter' option to reveal the solution letter for any tile you choose. To do so, first tap the 'REVEAL LETTER' button, then tap the tile you want revealed. The solution letter will swap positions with the letter currently in this tile, and the revealed tile will change to a purple hue (indicating its revealed status).

If the chosen tile already happened to contain the solution letter, then no letters will be swapped. However, the tile will still change to a revealed status.

Each reveal costs you 10 points.

Quintumble's full word list consists of 14,869 five-letter words sourced from an aggregation of publicly available English dictionaries that include both North American and British spelling.

However, each Quintumble's solution set is sourced from a much smaller shortlist of just 2,309 common words. Although offensive and crude words are included in the full word list, they will never feature in the solution.

Not at all. Each Quintumble solution uses only common English words like CAMEL, QUERY or NORTH, rather than obscure words such as ABACI, MOXAS or ZYMIC (yes, they’re all actual words).

Having said that, you are welcome to try solving the puzzle using any 5-letter word. Each Quintumble is tested to ensure that it has only one unique solution, even with the inclusion of obscure words in the word list.

A Quintumble grid consists of 25 letters laid out in 5 rows and 5 columns. Each letter in the 1^st column can be paired with 5 different letters from the 2^nd column, which in turn can be combined with 5 different letters from the 3^rd column, and so on. Thus, there are 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 5⁵ = 3,125 possible ways to combine the letters.

For each of the 3,125 combinations, there are 4⁵ = 1,024 ways to combine the remaining 20 letters. And for each 2-combination pair, there are 3⁵ = 243 ways to combine the remaining 15 letters...and so on. Thus, there are 5⁵ x 4⁵ x 3⁵ x 2⁵ x 1⁵ = 3,125 x 1,024 x 243 x 32 x 1 = 24,883,200,000 different combinations of five 5-letter combinations. That’s almost 25 billion possibilities!

But don’t let this number intimidate you. Like any good puzzle-solver, you can use your keen eye for pattern recognition (employing some clever tips & strategies) to drastically reduce the number of actual possible combinations.

Most Quintumble puzzles result in only about 40 to 80 words among the 3,125 possible combinations. Each of these words can be paired with just some other words, which is only possible if they don’t share a letter in the same position.

For every 2-word pair, there will be a smaller subset that can be combined with a 3^rd word and an even smaller subset that is possible with four words

Finally, for all the 4-word combinations, there is just one that takes you all the way. Out of nearly 25 billion possibilites, there is only 1 unique combination of 5 words that can be made together. How about that!

Your stats are saved in the local storage of the internet browser that you use to play Quintumble. To ensure that your stats aggregate correctly, you must always play Quintumble on the same device and on the same browser. Also make sure the browser is not in incognito mode (as browsers are designed to not save data from a website accessed in incognito mode).

Most modern browsers support local storage by default. Your stats will continue to aggregate each day as long as local storage is enabled. Your stats will only reset to zero if you delete the data in local storage manually (either just for this website or for your entire browser).

Some apps (such as Facebook) open web links within the app itself. If you click on the Quintumble link within the app, then stats that were previously saved on your browser will not be accessed in this instance. For consistency, I recommend always playing Quintumble directly on your browser of choice, rather than through a third-party app.

The updated stats overwrite earlier saved stats, so very little browser memory is required to store your stats. At no point is your data ever sent to a central server. Only you have access to your stats.

Solve the Quintumble daily to keep your streak going! Your Current Streak resets to zero if you skip a day, or do not complete a puzzle.

You earn a new Streak Badge everytime your streak crosses the target value. Work your way up from Budding Hatchling all the way to the Ultimate Unicorn (365 day streak)!

*Updated on Aug 15, 2023

Quintumble is a mashup of the words quint (meaning a sequence of 5) and jumble. This is, afterall, a word jumble of 5 words with 5 letters laid out in a grid with 5 rows and 5 columns.

I like that the name resonates with the family of similar word games like Scrabble, Boggle and, of course, Wordle.