HOW TO MAKE WORDS

All answer words must use the letter shown in the centre of the diagram. For example, in the Polygon above, "noose" is allowed, but "moose" isn't.

No answer word may use a letter more times than it appears in the Polygon. For example, "niece" is allowed (because two Es are given), but "concise" isn't, because there's only one C.

Accented letters are allowed, and are considered identical to the same letters without the accent. For example, if the Polygon contains an E, words containing é, è or ê are allowed. C with a cedilla (ç) is considered the same as a plain C. If two words are the same apart from differences in accents, such as "pate" and "pâté", only one of them may be counted as an answer.

The minimum word length varies through the week. On Mondays and Tuesdays the Polygon has a total of seven letters, and answer words must be at least three letters in length. The total number of letters is eight on Wednesdays and Thursdays, nine on Fridays and ten on Saturdays, and answers must be at least four letters long on those days. The Polygon above has nine letters, so "con" is too short, but "icon" is allowed.

There is always at least one answer that uses all the given letters. In the example above, it's "economise".

ACCEPTABILITY OF WORDS

All answer words must be entries in the latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED). The 11th edition was published in 2004 and new editions appear approximately every five years.

Answer words must be listed in COED without capital letters. For example, "Moonie" and "Miocene" aren't allowed.

Answers must be listed in COED as single words, without hyphens or other punctuation such as apostrophes. For example, "come on" and "come-on" aren't allowed.

Plural nouns aren't allowed, even if they're irregularly formed. For example, "coins", "monies" and "icemen" aren't allowed. Neither are words like "folk" which COED lists only as a plural noun. However, if a plural form is explicitly listed in COED as a different part of speech, it is allowed. For example, "bats" (adjective), "lots" (adverb) and "times" (verb meaning "to multiply") are allowed.

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