Today's saying

Attempts:

How to play Phrasely

Phrasely is a free daily word puzzle built around everyday sayings. Everyone gets the same hidden saying each day, such as an idiom you might hear at work or around the dinner table, and your job is to spell it out with as few slips as you can.

How the puzzle works

The saying starts as rows of blanks, one word at a time. Tap a letter: if it's in the saying, every copy of it appears, and that costs nothing. If it isn't, that's a slip. After your second slip, the meaning of the saying appears as a clue. Whenever you think you know it, press Solve, type the missing letters and press Check my solve. A wrong solve also counts as a slip. Fill in every letter, by guessing or solving, and you've won. Six slips and the day is over. Every saying is a well-known, family-friendly English expression.

Scoring and the helper

Your score depends on your slips: solve it with no slips for 12 points, then 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2 for one to five slips. The helper reveals the most common hidden letter, but it halves the day's score and is only available before your third slip.

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 common letters such as E, T, A and O. They show the shape of the saying quickly.

Short words give a lot away: two- and three-letter words are often IN, OF, THE or AND.

Say the pattern out loud. Many sayings are easier to hear than to read.

What Phrasely trains

Language patterns. Spotting common letter patterns and short words helps fill the gaps.

Idiom knowledge. Recognising a familiar saying from a few letters.

Strategy. Choosing which letter to try next, and when to guess the whole phrase.

Did you know?

Spell-it-out guessing games were already being played in Victorian times: one appears in an 1894 book of traditional games.

Many sayings were popularised by Shakespeare, including 'break the ice' and 'a wild-goose chase'.

Your slips