Yes! Just click on the word in the wordlist to the right and it will be removed. This takes a bit of time to do, though, so we advise against making typos in the first place.

Some games, especially tournament games, may have blank tiles on the grid. Treat these tiles as if they weren't there; you can't use blank tiles to build your words. A blank tile is not a wildcard tile.

Prolific boards are random, following letter frequency rules. If you want a game with lots of words, you can select a "high" or "very high" word count when creating a game. This will get Prolific to generate 5 or 50 boards, respectively, and give you the board with the highest word count. It doesn't guarantee you'll get a high word count but increases the chances significantly.

You used to be able to, but this function has been disabled since we moved away from Facebook.

You can. Create a new game from the home page and tick the "private" box. On the next screen it'll give you a link that you can send to your friends via mail or chat. Once you've played your first game, you can click the "Play another game" button on the game results page and play as many games as you like with your invited friends.

No-one likes cheats. Some people feel their self-worth is dependent on their leaderboard position, and, in a way, you have to feel sorry those people because they're obviously not having a good time. But cheating wrecks the game for others, and is not tolerated in Prolific. It's fairly easy to determine whether someone is cheating, and if found, they will be banned permanently.

Yes, of course there are! You are expected to behave like a well-conditioned member of a global society. The fact that you can't see your fellow players doesn't mean you have the right to be abusive towards them. Any such behaviour will result in banning at the discretion of the developer. Having said that, you are mostly a bunch of lovely people and thankfully this hasn't been much of a problem.

Prolific uses the CSW21 dictionary, plus 16+ letter words from YAWL with British English spellings added. Thanks to Thomas Furlong for putting this dictionary together for us!

Sorry! We've chosen the dictionary and are not accepting any additions or deletions. It's important to play with standard, publically available dictionaries which are used as a common standard for online word games. All the words in the dictionary exist and are used somewhere—you will not be familiar with them all, but part of the game is to learn them and use them against your opponents to win!

We've thought about this and decided to only support the one dictionary set.

You can take a look at the list here. Please note that these are almost all offensive words.

Yes, anyone can join up for a tournament. Go to the Tournament tab in the Prolific application and join up. You can only join between when the tournament is announced on the home page and when the tournament starts; you normally get a few days to join.

You are randomly paired up with 3 or more players from your tranche each round. Every player in this group will play each other. Wins are counted as 2 points, losses as 0 points, and draws as 1 point.

To pass, you must get at least the same number of points as the number of games you are assigned in the round. For example, if you have 3 games in a round, you must win 2 (4 points), or win 1 and draw 1 (3 points).

Players who pass will play the others who also passed from their tranche in the next round.

Players who do not achieve the required number of points are said to fall, and will play the others who fell from their tranche in the next round.

Everyone starts in tranche 1. Those who pass round 1 stay in tranche 1; those who fall are placed in tranche 2. The next round the system repeats:

Player in tranche	1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8
Outcome	pass	fall	pass	fall	pass	fall	pass	fall	pass	fall	pass	fall	pass	fall	pass	fall
Next tranche	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16

Tournament rounds are two days long. Each round starts at midnight UTC on odd-numbered days (1st, 3rd, etc). There is no round on the 31st of the month.

The tournament finishes when there is only one player left in tranche 1.

Tournaments each have their own set up in terms of number of letters on the grid, minimum number of letters, number of dictionary penalty points, etc. Check the tournament configuration, available on the tournament tab, before playing so you know what kind of game you're up against!

Prolific uses the glicko2 rating system. Every three days, your Prolific rating is calculated by taking your glicko2 rating and subtracting double your glicko2 deviation.

For each opponent you play, the system looks at your rating and their rating. If your rating is higher than theirs, it will expect you to win more often than lose against them. If your rating is lower, it will expect you to lose more than win. The wider apart your ratings are, the higher the system's expectation that you will either lose (if theirs is higher) or win (if yours is higher.)

Not at all. The system is very fair: it knows that you should win the majority of games against people who are rated lower than yourself, but that you won't win every game. In fact, your rating can still go up if you exceed the system's expectation of the number of games you win against lower-rated players. So play those games!

The system expects you to lose against higher-rated players, especially if you're playing people that are on the leaderboard! So, no, your rating will not be affected. And there's always the chance that you'll win against one of them, which will do wonders for your rating!

Play lots of games – the more games you play, the more certain the system is about your skill. Win against people that are higher rated than you, and don't lose against people who are lower rated than you! Make sure you play a few games in each three day rating period, otherwise the system gets less certain about how good you are.

Prolific ratings are calculated every three days. Check the top of the Leaderboard page to see when the next ratings will be calculated.

It depends. If it was a server problem that meant you couldn't play your game, it will not be counted against you. However, we want to make sure people play games when they join them – there is nothing more annoying than finding out after 3 minutes that you have played against no-one! So you may be penalised if you drop out of a game that you have joined.

Every three days, your rating is calculated (see above). Everyone is put in their rating order, with the highest rating at the top, and then the top 5,000 players are given a ranking. 1st is the player with the higest ranking.

If you are in the top 5,000 players, you can see your ranking in the Statistics section of the home page. If you're not in the top 5,000, you won't have been ranked so your ranking will not be visible.

Check out the Prolific privacy policy.