3Letters

How To Play

Find the best word with the 3 letters in order

What does the best word mean?

The word can have any number of letters, which can be placed before, between and/or after the 3 given letters, but the best word is defined as follows.

• The word must have the 3 given letters as closely grouped as possible: xxx (60 points); x-xx or xx-x (40 points); x-x-x (20 points); no other possibilities
• The word must be the shortest with the best grouping; the word score is the grouping score minus the number of characters in the word
• For words of the same length and grouping, the one which appears earliest alphabetically is best

The best word is the word with the highest score

Game Rules

• All verb forms are permitted, except the 3rd person singular. For example: write, wrote, written, writing are all permitted, but writes is not permitted
• Plurals are not permitted
• The hyphen is considered not to separate letters, but does count as a character
• Accents are ignored
• All permitted words appear in Chambers 21st Century Dictionary on-line
• The solution for the best word for each day is given the following day

Example of scoring BTR

• 1. obtrude   60 group points minus 7 points for characters = 53 points total (the best word)
• 3. subtract   60 group points minus 8 points for characters = 52 points total
• 10. kerb-trader   60 group points minus 11 points for characters = 49 points total
• 16. debtor   40 group points minus 6 points for characters = 34 points total
• 65. debater   20 group points minus 7 points for characters = 13 points total
• 68. orbiter   20 group points minus 7 points for characters = 13 points total

* kerb-trader: the hyphen is considered not to separate letters, but does count as a character

* debater is better than orbiter because it appears earlier alphabetically

Yesterday's Answers

Ranking of the best Words

The first clue:

Do you need a second clue?

I want a final clue!