Add-A-Letter

Add-A-Letter is a quick-paced puzzle. Solvers must identify the single letters that should be added to the listed four-letter words to form five-letter words that answer the clues. In some puzzles, the four letters in the four-letter words remain in the same order in the five-letter words; in others, the letters are rearranged. Some puzzles have rhyming clues. The added letters spell out a word or phrase, in the style of an acrostic puzzle.

Any four-letter word can probably have a number of single letters added to it to form five-letter words, but the associated clue will determine the correct answer.

That solvers already know four of the five letters in each answer word means that they may guess the answer even before reading the clue. But where the letters are not rearranged to form the five-letter words, solvers must remember that the letter to be added could appear at the start of the four-letter word, meaning that the five-letter word would begin with a different letter to that of the four-letter word, as in adding an S to CARE to form SCARE.

A sound knowledge of English vocabulary will help solvers to identify where single letters could be inserted into a four-letter word. For example, it would be pointless considering inserting a letter between the Q and the U in QUIT.

The spell-out formed by the added letters can help solvers crack unanswered clues. For example, if the added letters so far spell out G R _ V E L, solvers know that the answer to clue 3 must involve adding either an A or an O to the four-letter word.