Four Letters is a simple and brilliant concept. It’s the kind of word game that will grab you and refuse to let go, surprising you at how often you’ll return throughout the day.
Each game is a matter of creating words from four letter tiles. You only have to create one word before the game moves you onto a different set of tiles and so on. The tricky part is the time limit. You only have so long to create a word quickly and things get trickier the longer you play for. At first, creating four letter words is easy but it soon becomes more challenging.
Requiring you to make such relatively simple words is precisely where Four Letters ends up being so compelling. It’s not hard and yet it sort of is, all in a jumble of juxtaposition. Four Letters doesn’t overcomplicate the formula. It gives you an indication of how much time is remaining, as well as how many different words can be created, but otherwise its interface is clearly laid out and easy to understand. Taps are obvious and the kind of system that anyone could figure out.
A statistics section can also be fun to peruse, offering various pieces of information such as how many words you’ve made and how quick you are typically. Four Letters is certainly a speedy game, being quick to restart and being perfect for that ‘just one more go’ thing.
Even though it’d ruin the name, a part of me wishes you could play Four Letters with five letters or more - but I accept that ruins the point. In its current guise, it’s as comfortable to play for a few seconds as it is for much longer. It really is intoxicatingly simple yet addictive.