How to play Detour
Detour is a daily word association game. Connect a start word to an end word in exactly five linked stops, dodge the three roadblocks, and beat a ten-second clock on every word.
The rules
- Each stop must link to the stop before it. A link can be a meaning (bee → honey), a common phrase (fire → truck), a fact (spider → eight) or even a name (bear → Pooh).
- Your fifth stop must link to the end word as well.
- Three obvious words are closed as roadblocks. Typing one of them, or any form of it (cow or cows), costs a life.
- You have ten seconds for each word. Running out of time costs a life. You have three lives.
- A word that does not link, or is not in the dictionary, costs no life, only time.
An example route
From SUN to KING: SUN → BEACH (55) → SAND (96) → CASTLE (55) → QUEEN (72) → CROWN (90) → KING (90). Route score: 76.
Scoring
Every link scores between 10 and 100 points depending on how close the two words are, ranked like the closeness numbers in Contexto. The link lights on the board show the band:
- Direct (green), 68 to 100: the link most people would make.
- Scenic (gold), 47 to 67: a clever link, or a well-known phrase or fact.
- Wild (violet), 10 to 46: a stretch that still holds, such as two words from the same scene.
Your route score is the average of all six links: five stops plus arriving at the end word. If you derail, the links you never reached count as zero. Your time to spare is shared alongside your score.
Daily puzzle and practice
A new route goes live at midnight in your time zone, so everyone plays the same route each day. Finish it to keep your streak going, then play unlimited practice routes. Practice results are not shared and do not affect your streak.
Sharing
Your result card shows your score, your time and one coloured square per link, without revealing any words, so you can post it in a group chat without spoiling the day’s route.
Accessibility
Turn on Extended time in settings for twenty seconds per word. Detour works with keyboards and screen readers and respects reduced-motion settings.