How Missing Link works

You get the two ends of a chain and a pile of words. Three of them belong in the middle, in one particular order, and the rest are near misses: words that genuinely link to something in the chain, just not where you want them to.

Take freezing at one end and sale at the other. The chain is freezing cold, cold front, front yard, yard sale, so the three tiles in the middle are cold, front and yard. Every puzzle has exactly one arrangement that works, so if you are told a join is wrong, it is wrong.

Reading the board. A red ✕ between two words means those two do not make a phrase, and the words either side of it turn amber: one of them is in the wrong place, and the board is not telling you which. A plain line between two words means only that the pair makes a phrase. It does not mean either word is where it belongs, because a word can make a phrase with its neighbour and still be in the wrong slot. The whole chain turns green when you have it.

Runs. A run counts the puzzles you get right the first time you fill the gaps, with no hint. One wrong check or one hint and the run goes back to zero, though the puzzle still counts as solved. Hints break a run for a reason: if they did not, the way to a long run would be to hint every puzzle and never risk a wrong answer.

Puzzles are built fresh from the same word list as Phrasicle, which means there is no end to them. The longer your run, the bigger the pile of words you get. A hint places one word for you, and it stays put after that.

Missing Link is the gentler half of the pair. If you want the harder daily one, with a saying to work out at the end, that is today's Phrasicle, and the rules are here.