How to Play Race to 500

The fixed round

• A new 4×4 board is yours for 4 minutes.
• Words must be at least 3 letters long and come from the active Wordrush dictionary.
• Each accepted word scores its length squared: 3 letters are 9 points, 4 are 16, and 5 are 25.
• The first player to reach 500 points wins.

Race to the finish

Start on a tile and move to an adjacent tile, including diagonals. You cannot jump across the board or reuse a tile in one word. Release to submit the trace.

A word is rejected if its path is invalid, it is too short, it is not in the dictionary, or you already found it in this round. The 500-point target is high, so the fastest runs keep finding longer words on top of a steady stream of short ones.

When the round ends

Reaching 500 points ends the round immediately. Otherwise the round ends when the 4-minute timer reaches zero. In solo play you can also choose End Round early. In multiplayer, everyone shares the board and clock, while each player keeps their own found-word list and score; the first player to reach 500 ends the shared round, and the host can end it early.