Suffixes and Prefixes That Win Letter Box Games

Endings that appear in live solves

• -S: GARDENS, JOURNEY's partner YACHTS, FATHOMS, SLICED's partner words all use a final S to close a chain cleanly.
• -ED: SLICED in Puzzle 4. An -ED ending is useful because D is otherwise hard to place, and -ED words often start with a common letter.
• -URE: CAPTURE and NATURE. -URE packs U, R and E into one ending — three letters that are otherwise easy to strand.
• -AL: CRYSTAL in Puzzle 6. -AL endings pair well with a following L word, as in CRYSTAL → LOUNGE.
• -GE: LOUNGE. -GE words end in E, which starts a huge number of second words.
• -Y: PUNCHY in Puzzle 7. A -Y ending is a finish line: it rarely helps the next word, so save it for the last word if you can.

How to use them in a solve

When you look at a board, list the endings the letters could make, then work backwards: which first word ends in a letter that starts a word with the ending you need? If you need -ED, you need a D and an E on different sides from their neighbours, and a word that starts with the previous word's last letter. Practise by trying to build a two-word chain for a board in unlimited practice, then check your route against the solver.