How we design the daily puzzle

The daily puzzle is the oldest thing on WordVault. It was the first page we launched six years ago, and it still gets the most attention from our editors each week. Here is how it actually comes together.

Every week one of our three rotating editors picks a theme. Themes are deliberately plain — a season, a mood, a region, a soft verb. We keep the theme invisible to solvers; it simply gives the puzzle a quiet internal logic.

From there, we draft between seven and twelve clues, then cut to five. A puzzle with three lovely clues is better than one with eight decent clues. The ten‑minute target is a ceiling, not an average — most of ours land at seven to nine.

What never makes it in: sports trivia, pop culture from the last twelve months, and anything that requires the solver to know the editor’s personal taste. Word games belong to everyone who loves words, which is the only rule that really matters.