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Ristikkotupaword games by the stove
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  1. Ristikkotupa
  2. How to play
  3. Letter patterns in four languages

Letter patterns in four languages

Every language has habits. Knowing which letters like to stand together, and which never meet, turns a jumble of tiles into a short list of possible words.

English: endings and pairs

English words often end in -ing, -ed, -er, -ly or a silent e. Common pairs are TH, CH, SH, CK and QU, and Y often plays the part of a vowel, as in ‘rhythm’ or ‘shy’.

In Hidden Word an E at the end of a five-letter word is so common that it is worth testing early. In Anagrams, setting aside -ING or -ER usually leaves a short stem that is easy to see.

Italian: vowels everywhere

Almost every Italian word ends in a vowel, and the ending often tells the gender or number: -o, -a, -i, -e. Double consonants are frequent — LL, TT, SS, ZZ, PP — and the groups GLI, GN and SC sound like single letters but take up several tiles.

The accented letters à, è, é, ì, ò and ù live almost only at the end of a word, as in ‘città’ or ‘perché’. If an accented letter is in the wheel, the word that uses it most likely ends with it.

Hungarian: long vowels and two-letter sounds

Hungarian writes long vowels with their own letters: á, é, í, ó, ú, ő and ű are separate from a, e, i, o, u, ö and ü. Sounds such as SZ, CS, GY, NY, TY, ZS and LY are written with two letters, and in these games each of them takes two tiles.

Vowel harmony helps a lot: a simple Hungarian word tends to use either back vowels (a, o, u) or front vowels (e, i, ö, ü), not both. Endings such as -ság and -ség or -ás and -és follow the same rule, so the vowels in the stem tell you which ending to expect.

Finnish: harmony and doubles

Finnish keeps back vowels (a, o, u) and front vowels (ä, ö, y) apart in the same word; e and i go with both. Long sounds are written twice — aa, ii, kk, tt — and words end in a vowel or in n, s, t, l or r.

Only base forms are accepted in Finnish here, so ‘talo’ and ‘kirja’ count but ‘talossa’ does not. If a Finnish guess is refused, try the dictionary form of the word.

Using the patterns

In Letter Wheel, look for the ending first. In Hidden Word, harmony rules out letters: once a Finnish answer shows an ä, the letters a, o and u are unlikely. In Word Ladder, vowels are the easiest letters to swap. In Word Search, the rare letters of each language — Hungarian ő and ű, Finnish ä and ö, English z and y — are the quickest to find in a grid.