+25 each
Every Special Word you submit adds 25 points on top of your base score. There is no cap beyond the five rows on the board, so a five-bonus board is worth 125 extra points.
Every point, explained
How Viisi scoring works
Win a Viisi puzzle and the game freezes a single authoritative score for that day. This page is the full rulebook behind that number — where the points come from, what takes them away, and how the result feeds your streak, your stats, and the leaderboards.
The Formula
One rule scores every win, in both modes. Nothing else adds or subtracts points.
Base win
100 Classic · 130 Expert
+25
per bonus word found
−10
per hinted row
Your score
never below 0
Only a legitimate win scores. If you reveal the solution, or fail out of Expert Mode, the puzzle is worth 0 points — and a score can never go negative, so heavy hint use floors at zero rather than digging a hole.
Base Score
The points a completed board is worth before bonuses and penalties. The mode is locked to the puzzle when you start it, so changing the setting mid-game never changes the base.
100 points
Classic Mode win. Hints are available, mistakes are free.
130 points
Expert Mode win. No hints at all, and three invalid submissions end the game.
0 points
Reveal, an Expert fail-out, or any board that was never legitimately completed.
The Expert premium arrived with scoring version 2. Wins saved under version 1 keep the 100-point base they were frozen with — Viisi never rewrites a result that has already been recorded.
Bonus Words
Some puzzles hide Special Words. Play one and its tiles flash gold.
Counted once
The bonus is awarded per distinct word. Matching is case- and whitespace-insensitive, so a word can never be double-counted.
Never hinted
A hint will never prefill a Special Word — not as its first choice and not as a fallback. Every puzzle ships with enough non-special answers to guarantee it. Bonus points have to be earned.
The Hint Penalty
Hints cost 10 points each. Here is exactly when that charge lands.
- Charged per row, not per tile. A hint prefills two letters of one row; that is one 10-point charge no matter how many tiles it fills.
- Two hints, maximum. The hint button only unlocks once three rows are locked in, which leaves rows four and five — so a Classic game can lose at most 20 points to hints.
- You only pay if you use it. The charge sticks only when the hinted letters survive into the word you actually submit. Type over the prefill with a different word and the row is not marked as hinted.
- Expert Mode charges nothing, because hints are switched off entirely.
- Hints cost you the Hint-Free badge and the hint-free leaderboards, but they do not cost you the win, the streak, or a One Shot.
Worked Examples
The same arithmetic, run across the results you are most likely to see.
| Result | Base | Bonus words | Hints | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classic win, no hints, no bonus | 100 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| Classic win, one bonus word | 100 | +25 | 0 | 125 |
| Classic win, two hints, one bonus word | 100 | +25 | −20 | 105 |
| Expert win, no bonus | 130 | 0 | 0 | 130 |
| Expert win, two bonus words | 130 | +50 | 0 | 180 |
| Perfect Expert board (five bonus words) | 130 | +125 | 0 | 255 |
| Solution revealed, or Expert fail-out | — | — | — | 0 |
A perfect score is your score matching the highest total that particular board could produce — the base for your mode plus every Special Word it contains. Hit it for the first time and the win screen calls it out.
Reading the Score Card
The card on the win screen shows the same components the score was built from — never a re-estimate.
Game Win: 100 points
Hints Used 1: -10 points
Bonus Words Found 1: 25 points
Score: 115 points!
Solve Time: 04m12s
Flawless Solve!
A clean run outranks the mode name: Classic earns it with zero hints, Expert with zero invalid
guesses.
Game Win / Expert Win
The ordinary win line, shown when the run was not flawless.
Hints / Bonus lines
Only appear when the count is above zero, so a clean card stays short.
Solve Time
Displayed under the total for reference. It is never scored.
The breakdown is deliberately strict: it is only drawn when every line can be proven from the saved record and the lines add up to the authoritative total. An older save that cannot account for its own score shows the result without a breakdown rather than inventing a line.
Solve Time
Timing is tracked separately from scoring — it never adds or removes a single point.
Active play only
The clock runs while you are on the board and pauses the moment you leave the game or send the app to the background. Walking away does not wreck your time.
Frozen at the win
Your time stops and locks when the fifth word lands, alongside the score. Shown as 04m12s, or
42s for a sub-minute solve.
Feeds your stats
Every timed legitimate win contributes to your average and fastest solve times, split by Classic and Expert. Beat your previous best and the win screen flags a new Fastest Solve.
Replays Never Overwrite
Reset a solved puzzle and play it again as many times as you like — the original result is immutable.
- Your first legitimate completion freezes a permanent record: score, mode, hint count, bonus words, invalid guesses and solve time.
- Finishing a replay in the same sitting shows a temporary card labelled Replay Score, so you can see how the fresh run went.
- Leave the screen and come back and the original saved result is what you see again.
- Replays are never added to your lifetime score, win count, win rate, streak or solve times.
- Resetting a puzzle you never legitimately solved does not resurrect it as a win — but it also cannot damage a result that was already frozen.
What Your Score Feeds
How individual results roll up into the numbers on your Stats screen.
Total Score
The sum of every frozen per-game score across daily and archive play.
Wins
Every puzzle legitimately completed without revealing the solution.
Win Rate
Wins as a share of resolved attempts only. A puzzle you have merely started is neither a win nor a loss
and does not drag the rate down.
Streak
Consecutive daily wins, counted in UTC. Only a puzzle solved on its own day extends it — archive
catch-ups do not.
Hint-Free Wins
Legitimate wins that used zero hints. Every Expert win qualifies automatically.
Performance
Classic and Expert splits: puzzles played, wins, win rate, average and fastest solve times.
A new puzzle unlocks every day at 06:00 UTC, and days are counted in UTC everywhere — so your streak works the same wherever you are and however far you travel.
Win-Screen Achievements
Called out on the result screen the moment you earn them.
First Perfect Score
Your first win that hits the maximum a board can give — full base plus every Special Word on it.
Fastest Solve
A timed win quicker than every timed win before it.
New Longest Streak
A daily streak that passes your previous personal best.
One Shot
Solved start to finish without leaving the board, backgrounding the app, resetting, or revealing. Hints do not disqualify it — walking away does.
Badges & Leaderboards
The milestones your results unlock, and where they get ranked.
🔥 5 Streak
Five daily puzzles solved on five consecutive days.
🏆 25 Wins
Twenty-five lifetime legitimate wins, daily or archive.
⚡️ Hint-Free
A win with zero hinted rows.
🎯 One Shot
A clean single-session solve — no reset, no reveal, no wandering off.
Game Center
Fastest hint-free win, longest daily streak, total wins, and total hint-free wins.
Sync
Results, badges and stats follow the same Apple ID across your devices.
Go chase a perfect board
Five letters, five words, one score a day — same puzzle for everyone on the planet.