PlusWord No. 1,606
October 14, 2026PlusWord is The Telegraph's daily mini crossword: five across, five down, and a hidden five-letter word. Each row you fill in is scored like a Wordle guess, and the yellow squares tell you which letters belong in the PlusWord. Play it on the Telegraph.
Hint 1: vowels and repeats
- The PlusWord has 2 vowels and no repeated letters.
Hint 2: its letters, in no order
- A, D, I, L, V
Hint 3: the first letter
- It starts with V.
Today's clues and answers
Tap an answer to see it, so you can take one clue and leave the rest.
Across
- 1 Across Dull and mediocre HOHUM
- 6 Across Run off, as people did to Gretna Green ELOPE
- 7 Across Exists LIVES
- 8 Across What the odds might (paradoxically?) be EVENS
- 9 Across Uncool NERDY
Down
- 1 Down "The face that launched a thousand ships" HELEN
- 2 Down Possible martini garnish OLIVE
- 3 Down Float in the same spot HOVER
- 4 Down Overturn UPEND
- 5 Down In a state of disorder MESSY
Today's PlusWord answer, No. 1,606
What VALID means: sound, reasonable, or officially acceptable.
How to find the PlusWord
Fill the grid first. Every row is scored against the hidden word the way Wordle scores a guess: a yellow square is a letter in the PlusWord but somewhere else, a green one is in the right place, and a plain square is not in it at all. Collect the yellow letters, then use each square's column to rule out where each one can go. On most days the yellow letters are the whole word.
PlusWord hides a word. This one hides a headline.
One real news sentence a day, twenty to thirty words, something that actually happened. Keep the five words a headline would keep and let the rest go. Here is yesterday's, solved.
At Camden Lock, a 71-year-old woman, Beatrice Millar, took off her shoes, jumped in after a drowning man and saved him by holding his head above water.
Five tries. blue is the right word in the right place, orange is one of the five sitting somewhere else, grey is not one of them. The result beats the process, a name or a job beats a place, and the little words never count.
How you finish decides which sticker you keep.
