RANSOM

You've been given a note to deliver.

The letters have to come from the words on the page — cut them out, one at a time, in order. But every word you cut a letter from has to still read as a word afterwards. Take the H out of CHART and you get CART. Take the C and you get HART. Take the A and you get a mess.

That's the whole rule. It sounds simple. It is not.

RANSOM is a paper-and-scissors word puzzle with a single, uncompromising constraint: what stays on the strip has to still be a word. Every cut costs you something. Some cuts look legal until you follow them through and realise you can never finish the note. On the harder tiers, roughly half of your opening moves are traps like that — three mistakes and the note is ruined.

FIVE DIFFICULTY TIERS

Lookout is forgiving. Boss is not.

A NEW DAILY NOTE

One free puzzle every day, the same one for everyone. Solve it, share the result, keep the streak alive.

A TEN-CHAPTER STORY

Each chapter is two to four notes cut from a single persistent page — the strips do not reset between notes, so you have to ration your letters across the whole job on one meter of three strikes. THE DROP. THE HANDOFF. THE WITNESS. THE END.

NO ACCOUNTS. NO SIGN-UP.

RANSOM never asks who you are, and the puzzles themselves play offline. Your progress and stats live in your phone's local storage — uninstall the app and every trace of it goes with it.

FREE, SUPPORTED BY ADS

RANSOM is free. An ad plays between some games, and rewarded videos are always optional — watch one for extra hints or another game, or skip it. Ads need a connection and use your device's advertising ID.

FAIR RULES, HONEST FEEDBACK

Tap the wrong letter and the strip shakes — that costs you nothing. Only cutting a word into nonsense counts as a mistake. Reach the last letter without ruining three words and the note is delivered.

Made for anyone who liked Wordle but wanted the constraint to bite harder.