How to play Phrasebook
Every day you land in a country that doesn't exist. Your phrasebook has six useful phrases in the local language, each with its English. Work out how the language works, then say three new sentences in it: tap the word tiles in order, and tap a placed word to send it back.
- Check when your sentence is ready. A right one locks in and the next appears. A wrong one is a slip: each placed word is marked right or wrong, and you fix it. Three slips and the locals stop listening.
- Cross-reference: tap any word in the phrasebook, foreign or English, to light it up in every phrase. That's how you find which word means "goat".
- The clock starts at your first tap, and each slip adds 30 seconds.
What a language can do
Every sentence is [adjective] subject verb [adjective] object, and no language has words for "the" or "a". Past that, each language picks from this menu, and you work out which:
- Word order: subject, verb and object in any of the six orders.
- Adjectives go before their noun, or after it.
- Plurals: a prefix or a suffix on the noun.
- An object marker: a prefix or a suffix on the object noun.
- "Not": a little word just before or after the verb, or a prefix or suffix on the verb.
- Past tense: a prefix or a suffix on the verb.
- Agreement: an adjective on a plural noun takes the plural ending too.
Monday's language keeps it simple, each day adds more, and Sunday piles the endings up. A solver checks every puzzle: the six phrases are always enough, by logic alone.
Today's country is the same for everyone and changes at midnight UTC. Finish it to land on today's board under a funny name, like Soggy Waffle, which you can change by swapping either word. Then try another country for practice. On a keyboard, Enter checks and Backspace takes back a word.