1. New game: Hive
Hive is a new word game. Seven letters sit in a honeycomb, and every word you make must use the one in the center.
- Words are four letters or longer. A four-letter word scores 1 point, and longer words score a point per letter.
- A pangram uses all seven letters and earns 7 bonus points. Every puzzle has at least one.
- Hive is untimed and saves as you go, so a puzzle can be picked up whenever you like. Ranks climb from Egg to Full Hive, which needs every word.
- Reveal ends a puzzle and lists every word you missed.
- Easy, Medium and Hard set how many words a puzzle holds. Tap the letters or type them on a keyboard.
2. Arcade games, rebuilt
- One arcade engine: Whack-a-Mole, Automatic Tap, Tap the Color, Memory Echo, Number Rush, Snake and Tetra Blocks now run on the same engine as Air Hop and Brick Breaker, so their timing holds steady on every device.
- Pause: arcade games pause with a key or P, a trip to another app comes back paused, and most count in 3-2-1 before play resumes.
- Runs that count: leaving or restarting Air Hop, Color Hop or Tower Stack mid-run now records the run at its score instead of losing it.
- No dead boards: closing a result card deals the next round, instead of leaving a board that ignores every tap.
- One sound to end a run: win, record and game-over sounds play once, after the moment that ended the run, instead of on top of each other.
3. Fairer scores, fresh leaderboards
- Reaction Timer: only a full run of ten taps can set your best, and the wait before the screen turns green can no longer be predicted, however long you have waited. Scores start on a fresh leaderboard.
- Tetra Blocks: pieces come from a seven-piece bag, and the late game keeps getting harder after level 19. New scoring starts on a fresh leaderboard; the old one stays as Legacy, and a run saved by an older version finishes there.
- Sliding Puzzle: the leaderboard now ranks your fastest solve rather than your fewest moves, and the game never deals a board that is nearly solved. Fewest moves stays as a personal record.
- Whack-a-Mole: the combo is a true multiplier, from ×1.5 at five hits in a row to ×3 at twenty, and Survival keeps tightening for two more minutes. Automatic Tap scores with the same combo. Both keep their existing leaderboards.
- Scores are grouped the way your region writes numbers.
4. Word Trace, sharper
- A word you score flashes and rises as points. One that does not count says why: already found, too short, not a word, or not on the board.
- Pause hides the board and stops the clock, and Rotate turns the board a quarter.
- Tap a found word to see its path. When time is up, the words you missed lead the review, longest first.
- Easy now runs three minutes, Hard plays on a 6×6 board, and rarer words score as bonus words.
5. Game by game
- Memory Echo: four big square tiles in classic green, red, yellow and blue, a note for each tile, and a sequence that speeds up as it grows.
- Tap the Color: the rule always sits above the word, on a plate you can read in every theme. In Timer mode a wrong answer costs two seconds, so mashing no longer pays.
- Color Hop: double rings you can always get through, and four colors that are easier to tell apart, including with color blindness, each with its own mark.
- Brick Breaker: explosive bricks that chain, a fire ball, a magnet, mirrored wall shapes, a paddle that steers the ball, and a pause between balls.
- Snake: arrow keys that fill the whole control deck, a board size for each level, and no more lag from a long snake.
- Tetra Blocks: perfect-clear bonuses, two hidden rows above the well, full keyboard play, a control pad that is never cramped, and line clears that sound their size.
- Tower Stack: each perfect drop in a streak rings a step higher, and the camera holds the top of the tower mid-screen.
- 2048: Speed mode can pause, and undoing the final move no longer counts a run twice.
- Air Hop keeps its sky clear of the scores and gets new flap and gap sounds, and Number Rush's glow hint really turns off.
6. Fixes
- Picking a different board no longer counts a run saved on another one as a loss. The game offers it back to you first.
- Clocks in Lights Out, Ball Sort, Tower of Hanoi, Peg Solitaire and Tetra Vex pick up correctly when you come back to the app, and a continued Chess game keeps both clocks.
- Hub search finds every game whichever category is open, and a tap anywhere else puts the keyboard away.
- Against the computer, turn and win messages now speak to you directly.
- Word Quest, Twin Words, Word Ladder and Equation Quest messages, and every statistics title, are now translated.
- Declining a rematch in Ludo, Snakes & Ladders and Chain Reaction clears the offer, and a factory reset keeps your Player ID for online play.