What is Melimelo?
Melimelo is a French daily word game. Every day, it gives you five words whose letters have been scrambled. They are French words of 5 to 8 letters, mostly nouns and adjectives, and your job is to put each set of letters back in order.
Each word comes with a hint of one to three French words, shown under the selected word. The hint points you in the right direction without giving the answer away. The grid changes at midnight, your local time, and is the same for every player.
How do you play a word?
You play word by word, in any order you like:
- Select a word in the list: its hint appears, and its letters are laid out at the bottom of the screen, like a Scrabble rack.
- Tap the letters in order to place them in the squares. On a computer, you can also type them on your keyboard.
- Correct by tapping a placed letter, or with the delete key. The shuffle button rearranges the letters on the rack to give you a fresh view.
- Submit. If the word is right, it is marked as found and the game moves on to the next one.
A word you have already found stays available: select it to read its hint again.
What happens after a wrong guess?
If your guess is wrong, the row shakes and the game compares each position with the answer. Letters in the right place turn blue and stay locked, while the others go back to the rack. All that's left is to rearrange the free letters.
Only the expected word is accepted. The same letters can sometimes spell several words (ORANGE and ORGANE, "organ", for instance): the hint decides which one is right. If a valid word is rejected, read the hint again.
A first game, step by step
Here are three words from an imaginary grid, each showing a useful habit.
Word 1: letters A, U, R, G, E, O, C, hint "Bravoure" (bravery). The letters A, G, E suggest the ending -AGE, very common in French. Put them at the end and you are left with C, O, U, R for the start. COURAGE jumps out, and it matches the hint.
Word 2: letters S, I, O, U, R, S, hint "Petit rongeur" (small rodent). Here the hint does all the work: a 6-letter small rodent with two Ss is SOURIS, French for mouse. When the hint is clear, start from the meaning rather than the letters.
Word 3: letters N, O, V, L, O, I, hint "Instrument à cordes" (string instrument). You think of VIOLON, the French spelling of violin, but type too fast: VOILON. The game locks the right letters in blue, V in first place and L, O, N at the end. Only squares 2 and 3 are still free, with I and O: the fix is instant.
You finish the last two words the same way. If one of them won't budge, there's no hurry: move to another and come back to it with fresh eyes.
The joker: a letter in exchange for points
The Joker button reveals one letter of the selected word, in a position you don't know yet, and locks it in place. Jokers are unlimited, but each one takes 60 points off the score of a winning game. Keep them for a word that really resists.
What if you are completely stuck?
Before giving up, try a plausible word or a joker: a word fully revealed by jokers is submitted automatically. You can also abandon. The game then counts as lost: your partial score, based on the words already found, is capped at 400 points and earns no stars.
How is the score calculated?
Your score out of 1,000 rewards words found with few mistakes. Each wrong guess and each joker costs points, and time matters too: a bonus if you beat the reference time, a penalty if you are much slower. A winning game also earns 1 to 3 stars.
To improve, read our Melimelo tips. And if you enjoy word games, discover our other daily French word games, such as Tusmo.