Play Aletheia: The Unwritten Name — a free word search of Greek myth, in your browser
Aletheia: The Unwritten Name is a browser word search game built on Greek myth. It is played one page of letters at a time: a grid of glyphs, a list of names that have gone missing from it, and a single rule — every name on that list is in there exactly once, in a straight line, in one of eight directions, and it is your job to trace it back out before the river of forgetting swallows the rest of the page.
How to play a page
- Read the list. Every name you have to find is on the right, with the number of letters in it. On the last page the list is nearly empty, and that is the point.
- Trace a name. Drag across a straight line of letters, or tap the first letter and then the last one. The line glows gold the instant it lies 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 diagonally counts exactly the same as one running left-to-right. From Act III the list stops telling you which names run backwards.
- Find the True Name. Every page hides one extra word that is not on the list. It is shown as a row of diamonds with its letter count and nothing else.
- Read the page out. When the list is empty, the chapter is read. Three stars need the True Name and no Echo spent.
Controls
| Action | Mouse | Touch | Keyboard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trace a name | Press and drag across the letters | Drag with one finger | — |
| Tap-tap selection | Click the first letter, then the last | Tap the first letter, then the last | — |
| Echo (hint) | The Echo button in the bar | Same button | H |
| Pause | The Pause button | Same button | Esc |
| Mute | The Sound button | Same button | M |
| Begin / continue | Any primary button | Same | Enter |
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. |
| 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. |
| 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 line cannot cross one either. |
| 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. |
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
| Act | Chapters | Where you are | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Fading Shore | 1–8 | The lower terraces of Olympus, going grey | 9×9 to 11×11 pages, five to eight names, rows and columns only |
| 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 |
| The River Lethe | 17–24 | The river itself, low and going lower | Mist over unfound names, no more ↺ marks, 13×13 to 15×15 |
| 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 |
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 chapter 30. It is called par, 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 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 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 at the middle.
- Hold three names in mind, not fourteen. Human working memory is the real limit here; on the 16×16 pages, pick a short name and a long one and sweep the page for those two.
- Read both directions from every letter that starts a name. Half of the names in Act III and later are running the other way, and the list has stopped telling you which.
- Save the Echo for the last name. One Echo costs the clean star; using it on the last name of chapter 30 instead of the first of chapter 1 costs the same star but saves a lot of staring.
- Look for the True Name while the mist is busy. The mist covers names that are on your list — the word that is not on it is never covered.
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, 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 API your finger uses. 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.
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.