Vexatile is a competitive word-tile game for 2-6 players. Each player builds their own crossword grid from a shared bag of tiles. Rounds progress with evolving rules until someone meets the active endgame condition.

1. Place tiles: Drag or click tiles from your rack onto your grid to form words. You must place at least one tile from your hand (unless your hand is already empty).
2. You can rearrange your grid as much as you like, adding as many words as you want
3. Play a card (optional): After placing tiles, you may play one card. Cards unlock after round 4.
4. End turn: Click End turn to pass to the next player.

• Tiles must form words of 2 or more letters, reading left-to-right or top-to-bottom (crossword style).
• All tiles must be connected: no isolated groups.
• Every word formed must be in the dictionary.
• You can freely rearrange tiles you placed in earlier turns: your whole grid is editable each turn.

• Drag and drop: drag a tile from your rack directly onto any grid cell. Drag a tile already on your grid to reposition it.
• Click to select: click a rack tile to select it (highlighted), then click an empty grid cell to place it. Click a placed tile to lift it back to the rack.
• Dropping one tile onto another swaps them.
• Made a mess of this turn's placement? Click Reset tiles to put everything back to how your grid looked at the start of your turn.

Select any tile (rack or grid) and click Return tile (draw 3) to send it back to the bag and draw 3 new tiles as a penalty. This is useful when you have unplayable letters. Not available when the bag is empty.

When a player ends their turn with an empty hand (every tile on the grid), everyone immediately draws 1 tile from the bag. This is called a VEXED and is announced in the event log.

You draw a card at the end of each turn. Cards may be played after placing tiles (from round 4 onward). There are three types:

• Endgame: Sets a new goal for the game. The moment any player satisfies it at the end of their turn, the game ends and the highest score wins: not necessarily whoever met the condition. If nobody meets it by the time the card-player's own turn comes back around, the condition expires.
• Scoring: Changes how points are calculated for all players (shown in the header). Strategies include longest word, unique letters, vowel count, and more.
• Chaos: Disrupts opponents: steal a tile, skip their next turn, swap hands, remove a word from their grid, force them to draw extra tiles, and more.

Points are calculated at the end of each turn based on the active scoring rule shown in the header. The default rule counts the total number of letters on your grid. Custom scoring cards change this for everyone.

When the game ends, leftover tiles count against you: each player's score drops by the total point value of the tiles still in their hand (shown on each tile), and everyone else's loss is added to the winner's score. This can change who wins.

The active endgame condition is shown in the Ends indicator in the game header. By default, the game ends when the bag runs out of tiles and the turn cycle completes: the player with the highest score wins. A played Endgame card may change this to a different goal.

CPU opponents play automatically after a short delay. Each one has its own play style, from chasing long words to keeping things simple or playing erratically, and may play Chaos or Endgame cards if it suits them.