Words of Wonders

Phone / tablet

Swipe across the letters in the wheel without lifting your finger to spell a word, then let go to submit it.

Desktop

Hold the left mouse button and drag across the letters to build a word, release to enter it.

Levels

Levels are grouped by world wonder, and each new wonder brings bigger grids with more letters and longer words.

Progress

Finished levels stay finished, and completing a wonder unlocks the next one plus a new background.

Only words that fit the grid count toward the level, so once you have two or three answers placed, use the letters already on the board to work out what the remaining slots need.

1. Spell the short words first. Three-letter words are quick to find and each one drops letters into the longer slots, so the big answer often reveals itself.
2. Read the grid, not the wheel. When I stalled, it was always because I was staring at the letters. Look at the slot, count its length, and check which letters are already fixed.
3. Try every ending. If the wheel has S, E and D, run your good words through -S, -ED and -ER. Plurals and past tenses fill a surprising share of the grid.
4. Save the hint for the last word. Hints are limited. Burning one on a word you would have found in a minute is how you end up with none on the grid that actually needs it.
5. Anchor on letter pairs. Spot TH, ST, CH or an -ING in the wheel and build outward from the pair. It narrows a seven-letter wheel to two or three real candidates.

Same idea, same wheel, same swipe. If you have played Wordscapes you already know how this works: a ring of letters at the bottom, a crossword at the top, spell what fits. The difference is mostly dressing. Words of Wonders hangs its levels on world landmarks and hands you a bit of trivia between sets, where Wordscapes leans on landscape photos.

In play I found them equally fair. Both will occasionally want a word you'd never say out loud, both give you a hint button for exactly that moment. Pick whichever you have open. The advantage of this one is that it runs inside YouTube, so there is nothing to install and no store account involved.

You'll find answer lists for this game all over the web, and I'd rather you didn't need them. The grids are solvable with the letters you're given, and the game hands out hints for the one word that won't come. If you're truly stuck, the trick that got me through the long levels was to stop reading the wheel and start reading the grid: count the slot, note the fixed letters, and work backwards from the ending. That finds the word faster than a lookup, and the next level is still yours.