What is ELO
ELO is a grid puzzle built on one rule: every letter carries its position in the alphabet, and every number tile must match the distance between the two letters it sits between. You drag across a seven by seven board, always letter, number, letter, through neighbouring tiles in any direction, diagonals included. C and E are two apart, so C-2-E works. Keep going and the chain grows: E-3-B, then B-1-A. Let go and the whole chain is banked, the tiles pop, new ones fall in, and one move comes off the counter.
The tension is that scoring rewards patience while the board rewards speed. Points rise with the square of the chain length, and a heat multiplier climbs only while you keep making chains of three links or more. One long chain can outscore a dozen small ones, but every extra link you hunt for is a link the surrounding letters may refuse to give. The whole game is deciding when a chain is long enough.
How to play
- Drag from a letter to a neighbouring number tile and on to another letter. The number must equal the distance between those two letters in the alphabet: C to E is two.
- Keep alternating letter, number, letter. Each letter-number-letter triple counts as one link. Dragging back one tile undoes the last step, and releasing your finger confirms the chain.
- Every chain costs one move. The score is 10 x links squared x heat, and heat rises by one for each chain of three links or more, up to five. A shorter chain sends it back to one.
- Clear the level goals, the target score plus any gems, ice and minimum chain length, before the moves run out. At zero moves the round ends and the score is final.
Strategies that work
- Length beats frequency. Points grow with the square of the chain, so one four-link chain is worth 160 base points while four one-link chains give 40 in total and cost four moves. Always look for one more letter.
- Heat is the real currency. Chains of three links or more add one to the multiplier, up to five, and anything shorter drops it to one. With heat high and only a short chain on offer, spend two charge on a shuffle instead.
- Read the number distribution. Small numbers appear far more often than large ones, so the dependable backbone is letters one or two apart, like D-1-E or B-2-D. Treat a 5 or a 6 as a jump to plan, not one to wait for.
- Gems and ice both need the tile itself to be used. A gem drops as soon as a chain consumes its tile, while an ice tile survives and only loses a layer, so you can route through the same ice twice.
- The wildcard counts as any letter and any number, which makes it a bridge. Find two halves of a long chain that almost connect and convert the tile between them. It costs four charge, so save it for heat of three or more.
A little history
ELO is an original game, written for this site. It has no older version and no traditional rules behind it, but the idea it uses is old: treating letters as numbers. Giving each letter its ordinal value, A as one and B as two, runs through the Greek and Hebrew numeral systems, through the letter-shift ciphers named after Caesar, and through the alphabetical-position tricks still found in crossword clues. The rest of the design is mathematical rather than historical. Making a number tile equal the absolute difference between two letters turns the alphabet into a ruler, and every valid chain becomes a path across a grid where each step has to satisfy that measurement.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know any words to play?
No. The letters never spell anything. They carry a value, from A as one up to L as twelve, and the ruler under the board always shows those values. ELO plays identically in every language, and extra vocabulary gives no advantage.
How exactly is the score calculated?
Each letter-number-letter triple counts as one link. A chain is worth ten points times the number of links squared, times your current heat. Heat starts at one, gains one for every chain of three links or more, and stops at five.
What is endless mode and how does it differ from the levels?
The thirty numbered levels give a fixed number of moves and a list of goals, and you can retry any of them. Endless mode drops the goals, starts with twenty moves and hands moves back for chains of three links or more, so a run lasts as long as you keep the chains long.
