Mastery Guide: The Ultimate Word Game Solver DSL
Welcome to the inner sanctum of word solving! To help you dominate your games, Skrabbl-bot spent weeks reading every dictionary, tournament rulebook, and tactical manual ever printed (including Scrabble for Dummies) so you don't have to. Whether you're hunting for 50-point Scrabble bingos, destroying opponents in Words with Friends, or crushing daily Wordle and crossword puzzles, this guide turns our solver into your ultimate secret word game weapon.
Quick Refresher: The Basics
Before diving into advanced slot physics, here is the basic progression:
- Simple Anagram:
abdgint searches your loose rack tiles for valid words.
- Wildcards:
? opens 1 flexible slot for any letter.
- Glued Blocks:
[ing] forces a connected sequence in that exact order.
1. What is a Slot?
When you pin letters inside position anchors (>...<), you move seamlessly from simple anagrams to building a physical row of squares on the game board. A Slot is simply one single tile space on the board.
>a< → 1 slot: The letter A.>ab< → 2 slots: An A followed immediately by a B.>abcd< → 4 slots: The exact 4-letter sequence A-B-C-D.
2. The Choice Operator (|) — Multiple Options for 1 Slot
The pipe symbol (|) means OR. It lets you give the engine a menu of choices for a single square on the board. Because all the options inside the pipe belong to that same square, the entire group still counts as 1 slot.
>e|b|h< → 1 slot: This square must be either an E, a B, or an H.
Compare the difference:
>ebh< (3 slots): A 3-letter sequence — E, then B, then H.>e|b|h< (1 slot): A 1-letter space — E OR B OR H.
Mental Model: Think of | as shrinking a list of options down so they all squeeze into a single tile square.
3. How Raw Inputs Collapse into Board Slots
Because choice and ban operators let you pack multiple characters into a single slot, and delimiters don't count, character position in your input box does not equal slot number on the board!
Take this pattern as an example: d<>!e|a|o<g?bn>t<
- Slot 1:
d<
- Slot 2:
>!e|a|o< (8 input characters collapse into 1 single slot!)
- Slot 3:
g
- Slot 4:
?
- Slot 5:
b
- Slot 6:
n
- Slot 7:
>t<
Notice how character #16 in your input field (the letter t inside >t<) ends up targeting Slot 7 on the board! All eight characters inside >!e|a|o< collapsed into Slot 2.
Skrabbl-bot says: "Yes! d<>!e|a|o<g?bn>t< might look like your cat walked across your keyboard! But to our solver, it is 100% precise, valid, and mathematically beautiful DSL search syntax."
4. The Ban Operator (!) & Important Rules
The exclamation mark (!) means NOT. You can use it globally across the word or inside a specific slot.
Global Bans (Anywhere in the word)
[!a] → No A allowed anywhere in the word.[!ch] → The contiguous pair CH cannot appear anywhere in the word.
Positional Bans (In one specific square)
>!a< → 1 slot: Anything except A.>!a|b|c|d< → 1 slot: Anything except A, B, C, or D.
⚠️ Critical Syntax Rule:
- Pipes are strictly for positional locks: You cannot use
| inside square brackets [...]. Writing [a|b] is invalid. Pipes only work inside >...<.
5. Becoming Unstoppable in Wordle
Combining choice and ban operators makes you virtually unbeatable in daily word guessing games.
Imagine a Wordle scenario: You know Slot 1 is F, Slot 2 is NOT E, I, or O, the 3rd letter is R, and there is no U anywhere in the word. You simply type:
f<>!e|i|o<>r<??[!u]
The engine processes the entire board state, eliminates gray tiles, enforces green positions, filters yellow bans, and gives you the exact remaining winning options in one shot.
Cheat Sheet
| Syntax |
What it means |
Scope / Slots |
[a] |
Required letter anywhere in the word |
Global requirement |
[abc] |
Required contiguous block A-B-C |
Global requirement |
[!a] |
Banned letter anywhere in the word |
Global exclusion |
[!abc] |
Banned contiguous block A-B-C |
Global exclusion |
>abc< |
Exact sequence A, B, C |
3 slots |
>a|b|c< |
Choice of A, B, or C |
1 slot |
>!a< |
Anything except A |
1 slot |
>!a|b|c< |
Anything except A, B, or C |
1 slot |
