Wetting the pen in the last of the ink…
No ads in Aletheia — just you, the letters and thirty pages of names the river has taken
Play Aletheia: The Unwritten Name — a free word search of Greek myth, in your browser
A free browser word search built on Greek myth. Trace the names Lethe has swallowed across 30 chapters and four acts, and hunt the one True Name hidden on every page. Ad-free, no download.
Aletheia: The Unwritten Name is a free browser-based word search game built on Greek myth, and it is played one page of letters at a time. Lethe, the river of forgetting, has started drinking her own source dry — and every name she swallows takes a thing out of the world with it. Statues lose their faces. The Muses' hall loses its labels. The gods go out one at a time, without ceremony and without anybody noticing. You are the last scribe of that hall, and the only person still writing names down.
What makes this more than a grid of letters is that it is constructed rather than sprinkled. Every page hides a list of names, and each of those names appears on the page exactly once — not probably, not usually: every letter the generator writes has to pass a gate that refuses any letter which would complete a name through that cell other than the one being placed. So there is no accidental second copy of a name, no filler letter that quietly finishes a word for you, and no name hidden inside another. On top of that sits the True Name: one extra word on every page that is not on the list at all, shown only as a row of diamonds and a letter count. Thirty chapters across four acts, an endless recitation that turns a new page every wave, and a par time that was measured by a reference reader rather than invented by a designer.
How to play
- Read the list first. Every name you have to find is listed beside the board with the number of letters in it. On the last page the list is nearly empty, and that is the entire point of the last page.
- Trace a name. Drag across a straight line of letters, or tap the first letter and then the last one. A name lies along one of the eight neighbour directions — across, down, or on either diagonal — and nothing bends. The line turns gold the instant it is over a real name, so you are never guessing about what you have hold of.
- Read it both ways. A name running right-to-left, bottom-to-top or up a diagonal counts exactly the same as one running left-to-right. Acts I and II mark which names run against the grain with a ↺; from Act III the mark is gone and you are expected to cope.
- Watch for the mist. From the River Lethe onwards a mist lies across the letters of names you have not found yet, then always lifts. It never changes a letter, never covers a wall, and can never hide a name permanently.
- Hunt the True Name. Every page hides one extra word that is not on the list. It is worth a star, a line in the Ledger, and a note on what the thing actually was.
- Read the page out. When the list is empty and the True Name is written down, the chapter is read. Three stars need every name, the True Name, and no Echo spent — and there is no clock in the stars, so a careful reader is never punished for reading carefully.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Drag (phone, tablet, mouse) | Trace a name — press on the first letter and drag across to the last |
| Tap-tap (touch) | Tap the first letter, then tap the last letter — the whole line is selected for you |
| Click-click (desktop) | The same two-click selection with a mouse, for long diagonal names |
| H | Spend an Echo — rings the first letter of one name you have not found |
| Esc | Pause. The mist stops while you are paused, so pausing buys you no free read |
| M | Mute or unmute the synthesised sound |
| Enter | Begin or continue the current page |
The board, exactly
| Rule | What it means in play |
|---|---|
| Straight lines only | A name lies along one of the eight neighbour directions: across, down, or on either diagonal. Nothing bends and nothing wraps around an edge |
| Either reading | A run read from its far end is the same run. There is no penalty and no trick for reading backwards |
| Exactly one copy | No listed name appears twice, and no accidentally-spelt copy of a listed name exists anywhere on the page — enforced at construction, then re-derived and re-checked from the seed before the chapter ships |
| No name inside a name | Within one chapter no listed name is contained in another, so finding one never quietly reveals or blocks another |
| Sealed walls | From Act IV some cells are walls. No name is written across one, and your selection line cannot cross one either — a drag that runs into a wall simply lets go instead of costing you a miss |
| Nothing can fail you | There is no clock in the campaign and no way to lose a chapter. A miss costs you nothing but your streak |
| The page can be re-read | A finished page is never closed against you. If the True Name is still loose, the page waits — the chapter does not end until you say it does |
Word search, crossword and nonogram
| Word search (this game) | Crossword | Nonogram / picross | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you are given | A full grid of letters and a list of names | Clues and empty squares | Numbers down the sides |
| What you do | Recognise a name inside noise | Recall a name from a definition | Deduce which cells must be filled |
| Knowledge needed | None beyond the letters | Vocabulary, trivia, culture | Counting and logic |
| Failure mode | None | Crossed-out pencil | An impossible board |
| Skill it trains | Visual scanning and pattern recognition | Recall and association | Constraint reasoning |
| Second language | Playable with a glossary | Brutal | Language-free |
The four acts of the campaign
| Act | Chapters | Where you are | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| I · The Fading Shore | 1–8 | The lower terraces of Olympus, going grey at the edges | 9×9 to 11×11 pages, five to eight names, rows and columns only |
| II · The Stoa of Echoes | 9–16 | A colonnade that repeats a hero's deeds and is losing their first letters | Diagonals open, 11×11 to 13×13, thicker decoys, the ↺ mark still given |
| III · The River Lethe | 17–24 | The river itself, low and going lower | Mist over unfound names, no more ↺ marks, 13×13 to 15×15 |
| IV · The Cave of Oblivion | 25–30 | Where names are unwritten rather than drowned | Sealed walls, 16×16 pages, fourteen names, and one last name to write |
The Echo, the mist and the walls
| System | When | What it does | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Echo (hint) | Every chapter, from chapter 1 | Rings the first letter of one name you have not found | Cannot find the name for you, and costs the clean star |
| Lethe's mist | Chapter 17 onwards | Hides the letters of unfound names for a few seconds, then lifts | Cannot change a letter, cover a wall, or hide a name permanently |
| Sealed walls | Chapter 25 onwards | Walls off cells: no name crosses one, no line can be drawn across one | Cannot make a page unreadable — the generator places every name clear of them |
| The True Name | Every chapter | One word on the page that is not on the list | Cannot be missed permanently: the page can be re-read as often as you like |
Campaign versus the Endless Recitation
| Campaign | Endless — the recitation | |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Thirty hand-built chapters in four acts, each with a measured par time | Generated pages that turn a new one every wave and keep going until you stop |
| Difficulty | 9×9 to 16×16, five to fourteen names, and one True Name hidden each time | Starts around chapter six and climbs: bigger pages, more names, thicker decoys, mist and walls |
| Fairness | Every board is re-derived from its seed and re-checked before it ships | Every wave is generated, proved and priced for par before you are shown it |
| What you chase | Stars and best times, one row per chapter | A single depth number, kept on your device |
Why par is a number you can trust
Each chapter shows a par time, and it is measured rather than invented. The page-read cost is what a careful reader pays to move their eye over every letter of the board once with the whole list in mind, checking the eight directions from every letter that could start or finish a name — and being charged only for the letters they actually had to compare before the line stopped looking right. That figure is converted into seconds at a fixed reading rate, with a small charge for diagonals and for sealed walls, and it is the same calculation for chapter 1 and for chapter 30. Because it is computed from the board and not from a playthrough, par cannot depend on which corner you happened to start reading from. It is called par and not a target: nothing gates on it, and a page read inside par is simply worth more points.
The Ledger, and the True Names
Every name you recover is written into the Ledger with a line explaining what it was — from MYTH, which is not a lie but a story asked to carry more than a fact can, to ATROPOS, who cuts the thread and has never been talked out of anything. The pages' True Names have their own lines: CLEW, the ball of thread and the whole reason anyone ever came back out of the maze; ASPHODEL, the flower of the grey field that nobody plants and nobody picks; and on the last page, ALETHEIA — un-concealment, the one word the river cannot swallow, because it is what swallowing is the opposite of. A name in the Ledger can no longer be drowned, so the Ledger is not decoration: it is the score.
Strategy that actually works
- Look for rare letters, not for words. A name with a Z, an X, a Y or a double letter in it has far fewer places it could possibly start. Obolus is faster to find than Ashes.
- Read one line at a time and never re-read it. A word search is won by covering the board once, systematically, rather than by staring hard at the middle.
- Hold three names in mind, not fourteen. Working memory is the real limit here. On the 16×16 pages, pick one short name and one long one and sweep the whole page for those two.
- Read both directions from every letter that starts a name. Half of the names from Act III onwards run the other way, and the list has stopped telling you which ones.
- Save the Echo for the last name. One Echo costs the clean star whether you spend it on chapter 1 or chapter 30 — so spend it where it saves the most staring.
- Hunt the True Name while the mist is busy. The mist covers names that are on your list. The word that is not on the list is never covered.
- Do not close a page early. If the list is finished and the diamonds are still there, the True Name is loose and the page stays open for exactly that reason.
Technical notes
Everything here is generated: there is no image on the board, no audio file, and no third-party script. The letters are drawn on a canvas with a two-pass engraving — a dark bite and then a light edge — the mist is an ink bleed rendered per cell, and every sound is synthesised with the Web Audio API at the moment it is needed. A chapter is a pure function of its seed: the generator places the longest names first, refuses any position that would spell a name twice, and fills the remaining cells with letters drawn towards near-misses — letters that make a line look like it is about to become a word without ever letting it. The chapters are verified before they ship: the engine suite regenerates all thirty boards from their seeds and asserts that each name occurs exactly once, that no name contains another, that no run crosses a wall, and that the reference reader can walk every chapter's plan back through the same selection the game gives your finger. Progress, stars, best times and the Ledger are stored in your own browser under aletheia.save.v1; nothing is uploaded, because there is no server.
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Aletheia: The Unwritten Name — frequently asked questions
What is Aletheia: The Unwritten Name?
It is a free browser word search built on Greek myth, played one page of letters at a time. Lethe, the river of forgetting, is drinking her own source dry, and every name she swallows takes a thing out of the world — so a scribe has to find the names again in the letters. Thirty chapters across four acts, plus an endless recitation that turns a new page every wave.
How do you play a chapter?
Drag across a straight line of letters — or tap the first letter and then the last one — to select a name. Reading forwards and backwards both count, and the diagonals open up from Act II. The list beside the board shows every name in the chapter and how many letters it has. A finished chapter is one where every name on that list has been found.
What is the True Name on each page?
Every chapter hides one word that is not on the list at all, shown only as a row of diamonds with the number of letters. That is the page's True Name. Finding it is worth a star, one line of the Ledger, and a note on what the thing actually was. On the last page there is exactly one name left in the world, and it is hers.
What is the mist, and can it make a chapter impossible?
From the River Lethe onwards the mist lies across the letters of names you have not found yet, and then always lifts — a chapter has no clock and nothing in it can fail. The mist never changes a letter and never covers a wall: it only hides the page from you for a few seconds, which is the entire point of the river.
Does every word really appear only once?
Yes, and that is a construction rather than a hope. Every letter written onto a board has to pass a gate that refuses any letter which would complete a name through that cell other than the one being placed, so no listed name can appear twice and no filler letter can complete a name by accident. The verifier re-derives this from each chapter's seed and re-checks it, which is why a page can always be read to the end.
Does it work on a phone, and does it need a download?
There is no download, no install and no account: it is one HTML5 page that runs in the browser on desktop, tablet and phone, including a 320-pixel screen. On a phone you can drag with one finger or tap the two ends of a name, the board rescales to the screen, and your stars, best times and Ledger are kept in your own browser.