About Lexico

Lexico is the first puzzle created for this site that didn't exist as a python experiment beforehand.

I'd asked some family members to beta-test the site and the three puzzles that existed at that point. My Mum said that Terridle was her favourite, because she prefers word puzzles, so I thought I should add a word puzzle next.

I was thinking about connection-based word puzzles, like Only Connect and the NYT Connections, where you get a load of words and have to work out the connections between them.
How could I flip that idea upside-down? You'd be given a connection and have to find the words?
I put a bit more thought into it and very soon decided on the concept of Lexico.

The game holds a database of words, a set of rules to link words together and a big web of all the links between every pair of words I could think of. The daily game generator randomly picks words, finds applicable links that lead into other words, blocks other words that would cause confusion and tries different combinations until it has a chain of links and a set of possible words that only goes together one way.