What is Keyword?
Keyword is a small daily word puzzle from The Washington Post that borrows a little from crosswords and a little from Wordle. On the board are six short words, each with one letter missing. The six gaps line up, and the letters that fill them spell a single six-letter word: the keyword. You guess one letter at a time. A right letter locks into place and helps you with its neighbours; a wrong one costs you a guess, but you can try again. A perfect game uses only six guesses, one per gap, and every extra guess counts against your score. The fun is in the back-and-forth: a gap that could be almost anything on its own suddenly becomes obvious once you have a few letters of the keyword. It is quick, gentle and good for a coffee break, and it suits people who enjoy spotting words from fragments, the way you do in a crossword when only a few squares are filled.
How to play
- Each of the six words has one missing letter. The gaps form one row.
- Guess letters to fill the gaps. Correct letters stay; wrong ones cost a guess.
- Spell the six-letter keyword in as few guesses as possible. Six is perfect.
