Today's chain

Attempts:

How to play Bridgy

Bridgy is a free daily compound word puzzle. Everyone gets the same chain of words each day, with two words missing. Each missing word is a bridge: it joins the word above it and the word below it to make two familiar compound words.

How the puzzle works

Read the chain from top to bottom. In SUN → ? → POT, the missing word is FLOWER, because SUN + FLOWER makes sunflower and FLOWER + POT makes flowerpot. The blanks show how many letters each missing word has. Tap a gap to choose it, type your guess and press Guess. A correct bridge is free. A real word that doesn't fit costs one of your six tries, and one more letter of that gap is revealed. Words that aren't in our list, or have the wrong number of letters, never count. Every compound in every chain was checked against an openly licensed English dictionary, and if another word also makes real compounds on both sides, it counts too.

Scoring and the helper

Your score depends on your misses: fill both gaps with no misses for 12 points, then 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 for one to five misses. A sixth miss ends the day. The helper shows the first letter of every gap you still need, but it halves the day's score and is only available before your third miss.

Streaks and badges

Your play streak counts the days in a row you've played, and your solved streak counts the days in a row you've solved the puzzle. Play seven days running and you earn a 7-point bonus, or 14 points if you solved all seven. Miss a day and the streaks start again. A new puzzle arrives every day at midnight UTC.

Tips

Start with the side you find easier. Think of words that go after the word above, then test each against the word below.

Say both compounds out loud. If either sounds wrong, try another word.

Solving one gap often helps with the other, because the middle word joins both.

What Bridgy trains

Vocabulary. Finding words that join neatly onto the word before and after.

Lateral thinking. Each gap has to work in two directions at once.

Language patterns. You start noticing how English builds new words from old ones.

Did you know?

English compounds come in three styles: closed (sunflower), hyphenated (mother-in-law) and open (ice cream).

Some compounds fused over time: 'today' was often written 'to-day' until the early 20th century.

Your misses