The Lexio glossary

The words you read at a Lexio table, from rack to source, with the exact meaning the game gives them. Each one points to a specific rule: when in doubt, the rules page has the final say.

Rack: The stand where you keep your tiles, hidden from view: seven at most. It is refilled from the bag after each word you play, as long as the bag still has tiles. The others see how many tiles you hold, never which ones, until the end of the game, when all the racks are turned face up.
Clearing: The Lexio board: a thirteen-by-thirteen grid whose four corners are walled off, which makes an octagon of one hundred and fifty-three playable squares, with the source in the middle. A walled-off square takes no tile, and a word stops there just as it does at the edge of the board.
Crossing: A bonus square that belongs to Lexio alone; there are four of them, very close to the source. It doubles each of the two words running through it, but only if the tile played on it is used in two words of the same play. If that tile is used in only one word, the square scores nothing extra.
Swap: To return one or more tiles from your rack to the bag, up to all of them, in exchange for as many tiles drawn, instead of playing. You draw first, then the returned tiles go back into the bag, which is mixed again. A swap is possible only if the bag holds at least as many tiles; the table sees how many you swap, never which ones.
End of the game: It comes when a player plays their last tile while the bag is empty, or after two rounds of the table without a single play. Everyone loses the value of the tiles they still hold; in the first case only, the player who finished takes what the others are holding. There is just one game, not a series of rounds.
Tile: The piece you play on the clearing: a letter and its value, from one to ten points, or a blank, which is worth none. The bag holds one hundred and two of them, including two blanks; the one hundred letters cover the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, without accents.
Blank: A tile with no letter; the bag holds two. When you play it, you name the letter it stands for, and it keeps that letter until the end of the game. It is always worth zero points, but a word ×2 or word ×3 square under it still multiplies the word. Still on your rack at the end, it costs nothing.
Letter ×2, letter ×3: A square that multiplies by two or by three the value of the tile played on it, in every word that contains that tile. It pays only on the play that covers it, and pays nothing under a blank, which is worth zero. The clearing has eight of each kind, all on the inside.
Word list: At the table, the list of words that judges your plays, loaded by the site’s server. A word that isn’t on it is rejected the moment you submit your play, without costing you your turn: the screen says “The word list doesn’t recognise…”, and names each word at fault.
Word ×2, word ×3: A square that multiplies by two or by three the total of the word covering it; two of these squares in the same word multiply each other. It pays only on the play that covers it, even under a blank. The clearing has eight of each kind, all along its edge.
Pass: To give up your turn without playing or swapping. It is always allowed, even when you could play, and it is what the table does for you when your time is up. Two rounds of the table without a single play end the game.
Play: To place one to seven tiles from your rack in a single row or a single column, with no empty square between them, touching a tile already on the board — or, on the first play, covering the source. The play goes through only if every word it forms is in the word list. Playing seven tiles at once scores thirty extra points.
Bag: The shared supply of tiles, well mixed, from which everyone refills their rack. Everyone can see how many tiles are left in it, never the order they will come out in. Once the bag is empty, the first player to play their last tile ends the game.
Source: The square in the middle of the clearing, which the first word of the game must cover. It doesn’t multiply anything: the screen draws it as a circle, and its name, read out by screen readers, is “the source, which the first word must cover”.

The words of the site — pearls, leaderboard, progress — are shared by every game, but for now a game of Lexio earns no experience, no pearls and no place on the leaderboard. They are defined in the general glossary.