How to play Lexo Duels
Lexo Duels is a word game played on a 4 by 4 grid of letters. You swipe through neighboring tiles to spell words before the clock runs out. Longer words are worth far more than short ones, and in a duel the higher score wins. That is the whole game. This page covers every rule.
The board
Each round deals 16 letter tiles in a 4 by 4 square. In a duel, both players get exactly the same board and exactly the same clock, so the only difference between you and your opponent is what each of you can see.
Making a word
- Swipe through neighbors. Put your finger on a tile and drag to the next letter. A tile's neighbors are the tiles touching it in any of the eight directions: up, down, left, right, and the four diagonals.
- Each tile once per word. You can change direction as often as you like, but a single word cannot pass through the same tile twice. If the board has two E tiles, a word can use both.
- Three letters minimum. Two-letter words do not count in any mode.
- Each word counts once. If the same word can be traced along two different paths, you are paid for it one time.
- A wrong guess costs nothing but time. There is no penalty for swiping something that is not a word. Time is the only thing you can lose.
The game accepts 260,345 different words of three letters or more. The dictionary lives on your device, so a word is confirmed the moment you lift your finger.
Scoring in one sentence
A three-letter word is worth 100 points, a four-letter word 400, a five-letter word 800, and a six-letter word 1,400. The full table, and how scores become your rank, is on the scoring and ranks page.
Game modes
| Mode | Clock | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Classic | 80 seconds | The ranked format. Every word of three letters or more counts. |
| Daily challenge | 80 seconds | One board per day, the same for every player, so scores compare directly. |
| Speed | 40 seconds | Half a classic round. Rewards a fast first read of the board. |
| Opening Burst (Blitz) | 15 seconds | As many words as you can in the first seconds. Trains your opening. |
| Clutch | 10 seconds | The shortest drill. Trains the final seconds of a close duel. |
| Short Words | 80 seconds | Only words of three and four letters score. Trains sweeping the small words clean. |
| Long Hunt | 80 seconds | Only words of five letters or more score. Trains reaching for length. |
| Endurance | 180 seconds | A long round. Trains finding words after the obvious ones are gone. |
| Practice | No clock | No clock. Explore a board at your own pace. |
Classic is the format that ranked duels and the leaderboard use. The shorter and longer modes are drills: each one isolates a single skill.
Ranked duels
A duel is one classic round, 80 seconds, against one opponent on the same board. A live ticker shows both scores while you play. When the clock stops, the server checks every word from both players against the board and the dictionary and works out both scores itself. The higher score wins.
Your first 5 classic games are placement games. After them you receive a Hunter Rating and a tier, from Bronze up to Legend.
Instant Ranked Match
When no live opponent is waiting, the game can pair you with a recorded performance: a real completed ranked game from a player near your skill level, replayed word by word at the times the words were originally found. It feels like a live duel because every find really happened at that moment of that round. An Instant Ranked Match is always labeled in the match details, and it does not count toward your duel win and loss record.
Playing with friends
There are three ways to play the same board as someone you know. None of them needs an install. Every link opens the game in a browser, and a new player only types a name.
A duel link
Open Play, then Friend duels, then Create duel, then Send duel link. You get an address like lexoduels.com/d/K7PQX. Your friend opens it and plays the same board on the same clock. A friend duel is for two players. The five letters at the end are the duel code, and typing them under Join with code works as well.
Your daily result
After the Daily challenge, press Share result. It copies the day's number, your score, and a row of colored squares, one for each word you found. The color shows how long the word was. No word and no letter of the board is in it, so it spoils nothing. It ends in lexoduels.com/daily, which opens today's board.
An open challenge
After a Classic round, press Make this run an open challenge. You get an address like lexoduels.com/c/K7PQXAB. Any number of people can open it and play that board against your recorded round. It never changes your rating, however many people play.
A link never gives the board away. The words of a recorded round stay hidden until the other player has finished their own. A second try on a board you have already played is a replay, and a replay earns nothing.
After the round: coaching
After every duel the game shows you what was on the board. After a loss it goes further: the exact words that would have flipped the result, the patterns you tend to miss, and a heat map of the areas of the board you did not swipe through. You can replay the same board as a challenge. Replays are for learning only: they earn no rating and no letters.
Letters and the Word Vault
Every valid word pays out the letters it is made of. Find BONDS and you have earned a B, an O, an N, a D, and an S. Letters are saved to your Vault, where recipes turn them into cosmetics: swipe trails, tile sets, and word effects.
Cosmetics change how the game looks and nothing else. They cannot be bought, they do not affect scoring, and no item in the Vault makes a board easier.
Board Worlds
Board Worlds are solo arenas with one extra rule each. They unlock as your player level rises.
| World | Unlocks at | The twist |
|---|---|---|
| Classic Citadel | Level 1 | The classic board with no extra rule. |
| Ember Forge | Level 10 | Find each word within 6 seconds of the last one to build a heat chain. The third and fourth words of a chain score 1.25 times their value, and from the fifth word on they score 1.5 times. Go quiet for longer than 6 seconds and the chain starts over. |
| Frostbound Library | Level 20 | 5 tiles begin the round frozen and cannot be used. Every 3 words you find thaws one tile, and every thawed tile adds a bonus of 200 points. |
| Tidal Ruins | Level 30 | The tide moves the board. At 20, 40 and 60 seconds, every row slides one tile to the right and the last tile wraps around to the front. A word found in the 5 seconds before a shift scores 1.5 times its value. |
Playing without a connection
You can practice with no connection because the dictionary is on your device. Offline games earn no letters, no rating, and no leaderboard place. Every reward in Lexo Duels is checked and awarded by the server.
What it costs
Nothing. Every mode is free and there is nothing to buy. The game is paid for by ads, and an ad never appears during a round. In the apps you can choose to watch one ad after a game to receive that game's letters a second time, up to five times a day.
Last updated October 4, 2026. Every number and word on this page is generated from the same rules and the same 260,345-word dictionary the game server uses.