Word puzzle glossary
Twenty-five terms every word-puzzle player encounters — from anagram to word square, with plain-English definitions and concrete examples. If you play Wordle, LexSweep, Crosswordle, or the NYT crossword, this is the vocabulary you already use without thinking about it.
Word-puzzle terminology has accumulated over centuries — from Victorian-era word squares to 21st-century daily puzzles. Knowing the names makes pattern recognition easier: spotting that today’s Wordle answer is an isogram tells you instantly that every letter is unique, which dramatically narrows the guess space.
1. Anagram
A word formed by rearranging the letters of another word.
Example: LISTEN ↔ SILENT
2. Palindrome
A word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same forwards and backwards.
Example: LEVEL, RACECAR, MADAM
3. Lipogram
A piece of writing that deliberately avoids a specific letter.
Example: Gadsby (1939) — a 50,000-word novel with no letter E
4. Word square
A grid where rows and columns spell the same words (a "symmetric" square) or different valid words.
Example: LexSweep uses 5×5 symmetric word squares.
5. Ambigram
A word designed to be read the same way from multiple orientations.
Example: The Angels & Demons book cover; the SWIMS ambigram (rotates 180° to read SWIMS).
6. Kangaroo word
A word containing letters of another word, in order, that share its meaning.
Example: MASCULINE contains MALE; ENCOURAGE contains URGE.
7. Heteronym
Two words spelled identically but with different pronunciations and meanings.
Example: LEAD (metal) vs LEAD (to guide); TEAR (rip) vs TEAR (cry).
8. Homophone
Words that sound alike but are spelled differently.
Example: THEIR / THERE / THEY'RE; TWO / TOO / TO.
9. Pangram
A sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once.
Example: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
10. Acrostic
A poem or text where the first letter of each line spells out a word or message.
Example: Lewis Carroll wrote acrostic poems hiding girls' names.
11. Tautonym
A scientific name where the genus and species are the same word.
Example: Bison bison, Gorilla gorilla, Vulpes vulpes.
12. Mononym
A name with a single word (for people or brands).
Example: Cher, Madonna, Adele.
13. Spoonerism
Accidentally swapping the initial sounds of two words.
Example: Saying "you have hissed my mystery lecture" for "missed my history lecture."
14. Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like what it describes.
Example: BUZZ, BANG, MEOW, SPLASH.
15. Portmanteau
A word formed by blending parts of two other words.
Example: BRUNCH (breakfast + lunch); SMOG (smoke + fog).
16. Eponym
A word derived from a person's name.
Example: SANDWICH (Earl of Sandwich); BOYCOTT (Captain Boycott).
17. Bigram
A sequence of two consecutive letters or words.
Example: In "HELLO", the bigrams are HE, EL, LL, LO.
18. Cromulent
A facetiously coined word meaning "acceptable" or "fine."
Example: Coined in The Simpsons (1996) and now widely used ironically.
19. Mondegreen
A misheard lyric or phrase that creates a new meaning.
Example: "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" instead of "kiss the sky" (Hendrix).
20. Pseudoword
A combination of letters that follows pronunciation rules but is not a real word.
Example: BLICKET, WUG, FAZH.
21. Isogram
A word where every letter appears the same number of times.
Example: A "first-order" isogram has each letter once: DIALOGUE, AMBIDEXTROUSLY.
22. Tetragram
A four-letter sequence; in word puzzles, a four-letter word.
Example: WORD, GAME, PLAY.
23. Crossword
A puzzle in which words intersect in a grid, with clues for each.
Example: Standard NYT crossword is 15×15; Sunday is 21×21.
24. Rebus
A puzzle that uses pictures or letter combinations to represent words.
Example: I♥NY = I love New York.
25. Cryptogram
A short piece of text encrypted with a simple cipher.
Example: THE QUICK BROWN FOX → WGE OEFXY ZSPHA SP if shifted by a substitution cipher.
How LexSweep uses these terms
LexSweep’s mechanic is a symmetric word square — five 5-letter words arranged so that row i reads the same as column i. The puzzle pool we draw from contains many isograms (words with no repeated letters — these are popular openers like CRANE, SLATE, RAISE), plus a healthy share of more challenging puzzles featuring palindromic or repeated-letter words.
See also: Word square history · How to solve word squares · Symmetric word squares explained
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