How to play the Ribbit game
Ribbit is a trace-a-path word puzzle. Every board is a small pond of lettered lily pads joined by connectors. A word is a path that hops from pad to touching pad, spelling a real word of four letters or more without reusing a pad. Each board hides a fixed set of words that share pads, and you win by finding them all until the pond is clear.
The steps
- Find a starting pad. Every board is a set of lettered lily pads joined by connectors. Pick a pad to begin a word — busy pads with many connectors are usually part of several answers.
- Trace a path. Tap or drag from pad to a touching pad, then the next, spelling a word of four letters or more. You can never reuse a pad within one word.
- Lock in the word. Release a drag on a real word, or tap the last pad again when tapping pad by pad, and it locks in as found. A path that is not a word just releases, with no penalty to your score or streak.
- Clear the pond. Pads are shared between words and only vanish once every word using them is found. Find them all — including the single longest star word — to clear the pond.
Shared pads and the star word
Pads are shared between words, so a single pad can belong to several answers. A pad only clears once every word that uses it has been found, so a leftover pad is a clue that a word still threads through it. Every board also hides exactly one word that is longer than all the others — the star word. There is never a tie for longest, and finding it usually lights up the pads the shorter words share.
Hints
Stuck? The Hint button works in two tiers. The first tap highlights a starting pad for a word you have not found yet. The second reveals that word's full path. Each tier counts toward your final rank, so a clean, hint-free clear earns the top rank. Tracing a path that is not a word costs nothing — it simply releases.
Ranks
When you clear a pond you earn a rank based on how cleanly you solved it — fewer hints mean a higher rank.
- Bullfrog — Cleared the whole pond with no hints.
- Tree Frog — A sharp clear — barely a nudge.
- Pond Frog — A steady, confident clear.
- Tadpole — You leaned on a few hints to finish.
- Pollywog — Every cleared pond counts — welcome to the water.
Tips
- Start from the busiest pads. A pad with many connectors sits at the middle of several words. Trace short paths out of it in every direction — the words that share it tend to fall together, and clearing it takes a whole cluster off the board.
- Hunt the star word early. Every board has one uniquely longest word. Look for the longest chain of connected pads you can spell; landing the star word usually lights up the pads that the shorter words also need, giving you a map of what is left.
- Reuse letters you have already walked. Pads belong to more than one word, so a pad you used in one answer is almost always part of another. When a word locks in, try new paths that branch off the same pads before looking elsewhere.
- There is no penalty for a wrong path. Tracing a path that is not a word just releases with no cost to your score or streak. Explore freely — drag across promising pads to test a hunch, and only hints count against your rank.
- Spend a hint to break a logjam. If one word will not come, a hint highlights a starting pad for a word you are still missing, and a second reveals its whole path. A finished pond beats a stalled one, so use a hint rather than give up — then chase the clean clear next time.