# Dicelex

> Dicelex is a free daily 3D word puzzle. Players spell words on a 4×4 board of rotating Boggle-style letter cubes and try to clear all 16 cubes in 3 valid words or fewer.

Dicelex is played in any modern web browser. There is no signup, no payment, and no advertising. A new puzzle is published every day; everyone playing on the same day plays the same board.

## How to play

- Each of the 16 cubes shows one letter on top. The cube has 5 other letters on its remaining faces.
- **Rotate a cube** by dragging on a side face. The cube tilts in the drag direction and snaps to the nearest of 24 cube orientations on release, so any of the 6 letters can be brought to the top.
- **Spell a word** by pressing and holding a cube for ~300 ms (the cube glows), then dragging across adjacent cubes — including diagonals — to chain letters. Release to submit.
- A submission is **valid** iff the chained letters form a word in the built-in English dictionary. `Q` is interpreted as `qu` (Boggle convention).
- Valid words remove the chained cubes from the board. Surviving cubes fall to fill the gap (column gravity).
- **Win** by clearing all 16 cubes in **3 or fewer valid words**. Invalid attempts don't count and are unlimited.
- Each daily puzzle allows up to **3 undos** to take back the last valid word you played, so you can rewind and try a different chain before the board resets the next day.
- Mid-game progress is saved to your browser's local storage, so refreshing resumes where you left off.

## Why it's interesting

- It's a word game where the **board itself is mutable** — rotating cubes lets you reshape the puzzle before committing to a word.
- The 3-word limit makes it a planning puzzle, not just a vocabulary test: a single clever long word that touches the right cells is often worth more than three short words.
- Daily puzzles are deterministic and seeded, so anyone playing on the same day plays the same board.

## Site

- Play: https://dicelex.app/
- Author: Laszlo Kiss

## Tech

Web app built with TanStack Start (React 19 SSR), react-three-fiber, three.js, Zustand, Tailwind CSS v4, and Vite. Requires JavaScript and WebGL to run.