This article contains everything you need to know about Arkadium's Hurdle Game.


Use the list below to navigate specific topics about Hurdle.



How to play


General rules. Each Hurdle puzzle contains a secret five-letter word you'll need to solve every day. You have six guesses to try to get it right. After each guess, the tiles' colors will indicate how close your guess was to the word:


  • If the tile turns green, it's the correct letter in the right spot.


  • If the tile turns yellow, the letter is in the word but not in the right spot.


  • If the tile turns grey, the letter is not found in the word.



The 5th and final Hurdle puzzle will be prefilled with the answers from the previous 4 Hurdles. 


NOTE: you only have 2 chances to solve the final Hurdle


Hard Mode. To enable hard mode, please, click on the "hamburger" menu in the top left corner, click on Settings and enable the Hard Mode dongle.



High Contrast Mode. To enable high contrast mode, please, click on the "hamburger" menu in the top left corner, click on Settings and enable the High Contrast Mode dongle. This mode will allow you to view the game in a high contrast should you require.



Recap function. You can use the Recap function at the game end to check your answers.



Secret word. If you didn't guess a secret word, you can see it at the top of the game over screen.

 

   

Tips


Go-to word. According to linguistic researches, vowels are the most common letters in the English language. Use the first word containing as many vowels as possible.


EXAMPLE: ADIEU, AUDIO or RAISE can be used as the first word


Distinct words. Try to use words with completely different sets of letters for the first two guesses to gather more information. Using this strategy, you can find 20 out 26 letters in 5 tries.


Correct letters. If a first guess is not of much help, then you should focus on securing a completely different word as the second guess.


Duplicate letters. Some words can be tricky because they may contain duplicate letters. 


EXAMPLE: the secret word can be MAMMA or KAYAK

  

Form of the secret word. In most cases, the secret word will be in a single form. The exception is the words with irregular plural forms like GEESE.


EXAMPLE: if you put out A, C, E, L, S, the answer is likely to be SCALE, not LACES


Pen&paper. Though you have only six guesses, you can use a pen and paper to eliminate impossible variants.



Dictionary


Similarly to all games, Hurdle has limitations regarding the words that appear in their puzzles. So why do these limitations exist? 


The game's dictionary includes 15 000 permissible words that are specific to wordle-based games. However, it's been estimated that there are over one million words in the English language. 


Additionally, the number of words in the English language is constantly changing – as new words are adopted, others become obsolete. For this reason, unfortunately, we are unable to create a dictionary that accounts for all words in the English language.


The words that are available in the dictionary are also limited to all 5-letter words in the database, seeing as Hurdle is limited to 5-letter words in its design.



Scoring


The game has four regular Hurdles and a final Hurdle that is prefilled with answers and only has two guesses.


General formula. If a player completes a Hurdle:


Final Score = 1000 + (100 * Number of Empty Lines) + Winning Bonus 


The number of Empty Lines. There are six lines in the Hurdle game, and the maximum number of empty lines is five since a player needs at least 1 line to guess a word. 


Winning Bonus. Winning the whole game gives a 4000 points bonus.


EXAMPLE: player guesses the word on the first try. His score will be 1000 + (100*5) = 1500 points


NOTE: for Hurdles 2-4, the first guess is pre-filled so the maximum number of emty lines for these Hurdles is 4. For Hurdle 5 the first four guesses are pre-filled so if the player gets it correct on the first guess, it counts as if he got it on the fifth line: 1000 + (1 * 100) = 1100 points


 

General formula. If a player loses the game:


Final Score = 10 * Number of Yellow Letters on the Keyboard + 20 * Number of Green Letters on the Keyboard.


EXAMPLE: player end the game with 2 green and 1 yellow letter. His score will be (10 * 1) + (20 * 2) = 50 points



Hard Mode. If a player chooses the hard difficulty of the game, his Final Score will be multiplied by 1.5. 


The Maximum possible score: 1500 points for the first Hurdle + 1400 points for the second Hurdle + 1400 points for the third Hurdle + 1400 points for the fourth Hurdle + 1100 points for the final Hurdle + 4000 bonus points = 10800 (Normal mode) 


NOTE: in hard mode your score will be multiplied by 1.5 so the highest score in hard mode is 10800 * 1.5 = 16200 points

 


Using Gems


The Hurdle now allows gems to help you guess the word of the day! Three different helping options can be accessed by using gems.




There are three different types of help that you can use:



Clue. The clue will display a clue about the target word. You can guess what it is through a short description.



Remove. Remove will turn three letters of the keyboard gray, improving your chances of guessing the correct ones.



Reveal. Reveal will reveal one of the letters in the word, helping you with the total result.



Archive Puzzles


Regular players can access each day's Hurdle game, and if you register a free account with Arkadium, you'll be able to access yesterday's game in case you've missed it.


 


30-Day Archive.  However, Arkadium Advantage subscribers can access an exclusive full archive of the past 30 days of Hurdle word puzzles.