How It Works
Gramma Ana is a fast, friendly word-stealing game. Every turn you scan the community tiles and the words on the table, searching for a better word that uses at least one community tile. Build something fresh, or steal by extending an existing word and claiming it as your own. The game stays tight and tactical: every move reshapes the table, and every new tile changes what is possible.
Internet Required
Most Gramma Ana features need an internet connection. Games with friends, Gramma games, and the judge use server data. Anagram Challenges are available offline.
Detailed Rules
- Start with four community tiles; each turn adds one tile drawn with replacement.
- You have one minute to play, but you can pass early to end your turn.
- Make a word from community tiles, or steal by extending one existing word.
- Every valid word must use at least one community tile.
- Steals must use all letters from exactly one existing word.
- When a word is accepted, the community letters used are removed immediately.
- The game ends after 100 tiles have been used.
- Once the last tile is added, each player gets one final turn.
How Scores are Calculated
- Your score is the total of your word scores.
- Each word is worth its length in letters minus 3 points (e.g., BIKE = 1, TOUCHES = 4).
- Stealing a word moves those points to your score and removes them from the previous owner.
How the Judge Works
The judge checks these things:
- The word must be in the dictionary.
- The word uses either:
- Only community tiles.
- At least one community tile and all letters from exactly one existing word.
- If stealing, the new word must be distinct from the original word. To be distinct, it must not be a shared root, lemma, or spelling variant of the original.
You can use the judge when you're playing with real tiles on a table. Enter the word you're trying to make and, if needed, the word you're stealing from. The judge applies the same dictionary and steal rules as the online game so you can resolve tricky steals quickly.
Playing as a Guest
You can play solo or against Gramma Ana without creating an account. Guest games are saved only for the current session, so they will not persist between app restarts or if you clear your browser data. Create an account to keep your games and play with friends.
Gramma Ana Ratings
Your Gramma Ana rating controls how tough her words can be. It starts at 50, and Gramma only plays words with a difficulty rating at or below your number.
- If you beat Gramma Ana, your rating goes up.
- If she beats you, your rating goes down (never below 10).
- For your first 10 Gramma games, the rating changes by 5 points. After that, it changes by 1.
Word difficulty (1–100) is based on how common the word is in real-world text for that language. We use the wordfreq library: rarer words get a higher difficulty, common words a lower one. If your Gramma Ana rating is 50, she will only play words with a difficulty rating of 50 or lower.
Anagram Challenges
Anagram Challenges are puzzle ladders where you transform a start word into a goal word, one valid steal at a time. Each step must follow normal judge rules.
- Tap or click Challenges to open the challenge pack.
- Type each step so it forms a legal steal from the previous word.
- Challenges are available offline in the Gramma Ana app.
Word Tools
Our Anagram Solver finds all valid words you can make from a set of letters. Use it to practice for Gramma Ana or to unscramble any word. It uses the same dictionaries as the game.
