The questions people ask before their first game of Lexio: who decides whether a word is valid, why a real word can be rejected, what the bonus squares are worth, and how the game ends.
It’s a crossword game for two to four players, each playing for themselves. Taking turns, players place tiles from their rack on a shared board, the clearing, to form a word that hooks onto the ones already there; every word formed scores points.
The game isn’t played in rounds: the bag empties little by little, and the game stops when a player plays their last tile while the bag is empty, or when nobody plays anything for two rounds of the table. The player with the most points wins.
Two to four, each playing for themselves: there are no teams and no partners. The host can start the game as soon as there are two of you at the table, and seats follow the order of arrival — the first to arrive opens.
The limit of four comes from the bag: each player must be able to fill their rack with seven tiles, then refill it twice. With four players, that makes eighty-four tiles out of the bag’s one hundred and two; with five, it would take one hundred and five. No bot plays Lexio: you need to gather real people.
In French, for now, at every table and whatever language you are reading the site in: the tiles carry the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, and the table’s word list is the one for that French alphabet — the words you play must be French words.
The tiles have no accents. An accented word is therefore played without its accents — “été”, French for “summer”, is spelled E, T, E, and a “ç” is played with a C — and that is the form in which the word list looks it up.
The table’s word list: a list of words that the site’s server loads when it starts. A word is accepted if it is on the list and rejected if it isn’t, and no player acts as referee. Without that list, the game simply isn’t offered, rather than opening tables where every word would be rejected.
Every word formed by your play is checked when you submit it, including the ones your tiles create by touching neighboring letters. So there is nothing to challenge: a word that isn’t in the word list never reaches the clearing.
Because it isn’t in the table’s word list, which remains a finite list. The screen puts it exactly that way — “The word list doesn’t recognise…” — and never claims that the word doesn’t exist. Check the words your play forms crosswise too: the screen names every rejected word in the play, not just the first one.
A rejection costs you neither points nor your turn: the play doesn’t go through, and you can fix your word or build another one. Your time keeps running, though, and tries are counted: you have a reserve of ten plays rejected for an unknown word, which gets one try back every fifteen seconds; an accepted play gives none back. Passing always remains possible, and so does swapping as long as the bag holds enough tiles.
The bag holds two. When you play a blank, you name the letter it stands for; it keeps that letter until the end of the game, and the whole table sees it, including for the words that will later cross it.
A blank is always worth zero points, even on a letter ×2 or letter ×3 square. Played on a word ×2 or word ×3 square, though, it multiplies the whole word. And if it is still on your rack at the end of the game, it costs you nothing.
A letter ×2 or letter ×3 square multiplies the value of the tile played on it; a word ×2 or word ×3 square multiplies the word’s total, and two word squares in the same word multiply each other. Each bonus pays only on the play that covers its square, but in each of the words running through it.
The crossing is the square that belongs to Lexio alone: it doubles each of the two words running through it, but only if the tile you play there is used in two words of the same play. The word bonuses are all on the edge of the clearing, the letter bonuses inside, and no bonus square touches another along a side. The first word of the game reaches no square that pays.
Thirty extra points. The bonus goes to the play that places seven tiles at once, that is, a whole rack; it is added after the squares’ multiplications, and so it is never multiplied.
It counts the tiles played, not the rack emptied: at the end of the game, when the bag is empty and you have only a few tiles left, playing them all doesn’t earn the bonus. It does, however, end the game, and you take what the others still hold.
In two ways. If a player plays their last tile while the bag is empty, the game stops at once: everyone loses the value of the tiles they still hold, and the player who finished also takes the total of what the others are holding.
If two rounds of the table go by without a single play (passes and swaps don’t count as plays), the game also stops: everyone loses the value of their remaining tiles, and nobody takes anything. A score can then go negative. The highest score wins; in a tie, the win is shared, with no tiebreak.
Yes. Passing is always allowed, even if you could play, and so is swapping, as long as the bag holds at least as many tiles as you want to return. You return anything from one tile to your whole rack: you first draw as many from the bag, then your tiles go back in and the bag is mixed again — so you never draw back the ones you have just returned.
Neither one scores points, and both end your turn. The game log shows that you passed, or how many tiles you swapped, never which ones. Keep in mind that two rounds of the table without a single play end the game.
Each turn has a time limit, and the screen tells you how much time you have left. Once that time is up, the table passes for you: it never looks for a word in your place.
If you lose your connection, you keep your seat and your rack, and the game carries on without waiting for you: on your turn, the table gives you only a few seconds before passing for you. When you come back, you find the clearing and the game log as they now stand; the time lost while you were disconnected isn’t given back.
For now, Lexio tables are invitation-only, and they don’t appear in the public lobby. If you’ve been given a code, enter it from the home page to join the table: the host can start the game as soon as there are two of you, and the table takes up to four.
For now, a game of Lexio doesn’t count toward your progress or the leaderboard. Questions about your account, the shop or privacy apply to every game on the site. They are in the general FAQ.