How to play Dustword: rules and decipherment strategy
Everything you need to play Dustword, plus tips to get a better score.
How to play
- Every day a lost civilisation leaves 4 to 7 tablets. Each one shows a picture and its sentence in their script. Write the sentence for a new picture.
- Each glyph is one word, and it always means the same thing: a thing (fish, house…), a colour, a number, a place (on top of, next to, inside), an action (eats, looks at) or "there is no".
- Tap a glyph on a tablet and it lights up on every tablet where it appears. That is your main tool.
- The notebook is optional and never counts: note what you think a glyph means, and the note shows under it on every tablet.
- Write the new picture with the glyph keyboard (every glyph from the tablets). Tap a filled slot to clear it. Check spends a try.
- After each try every slot shows a frame (right glyph, right place), a dot (the glyph is in the sentence, but elsewhere) or nothing (not in the sentence). Repeated glyphs are matched one by one, as in Wordle.
- You have 6 tries and your score is how many you needed. If they run out, the sentence and the whole language are revealed.
- Everything you need is on the tablets: every glyph of the answer is on at least one of them, and a solver checks there is only one way to write it.
- One thing has no number word. Two and three have their own glyph, or the language repeats the thing's glyph.
- Colours, numbers, places, actions and "there is no" can go before or after: from Wednesday at least one rule is neither the English nor the Spanish one.
- Monday: things and numbers, 4 tablets. Tuesday adds colours, Wednesday places, Thursday stranger numbers, Friday "there is no", Saturday actions, and Sunday mixes everything on 7 tablets.
- Sharing shows the civilisation's name and one row of 🟩 🟨 ⬛ per try, never a glyph or a meaning.
Strategy: compare, isolate, distrust
Start with what changes. Find two tablets whose pictures are almost the same, say two red fish and two blue fish. The glyph that changes between their sentences is the colour; the glyphs they share are the fish and the number.
Isolate the small words. A colour glyph turns up with every thing of that colour, whatever the thing is. A number glyph turns up only when there are two (or three) of something. Tap a glyph and count the tablets it lights up on.
Distrust your own word order. These languages may put the colour after the thing, the number at the end, the place word before both things or the action last. Read the order off a tablet that has the same structure as the new picture.
Use the notebook. Once a glyph is clear, note it: the notes show under the glyphs on every tablet, and what is left to work out stands out.
Every try tells you something. A dot means the glyph belongs in the sentence but somewhere else: often it is the order, not the word, that is wrong.
Sharing shows one row per try, without giving anything away: 🟨⬛🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩