Every day, PatchWord hands your room two random categories. Pick one example from each and mash them into the funniest portmanteau you can make and still live with yourself, then drop it on the board. React to — and heckle — everyone else's. A fresh prompt lands daily at 1 AM Pacific. That's the whole game.

No — you can jump into a room and play without signing up. But an account (just an email and password) keeps your rooms together across devices, lets you own and manage rooms, and keeps your name and mugshot consistent everywhere.

If you only ever play on one device, anonymous is fine. If you bounce between your phone and your laptop, sign in.

Hit Share (or Copy link) in a room and send the link to whoever you'd like to incriminate.

Rooms have a door policy: Open invite means anyone with the link walks right in; Approval required means newcomers knock and the room's owner lets them in. The owner can change the policy — or close the room to new players — in room settings.

When you create or join a room you pick a display name; that's what shows on your word crimes and comments. A few things follow from it:

Your mugshot is generated from your name — same name, same booking photo, in every room (no uploads; it's auto-drawn).
Signed in? Your name is filled in from your account, so it stays consistent.
Want to go incognito? Use a different name in a room — but PatchWord treats that as a different character: a different mugshot, and possibly a separate spot in the player list.

So if you ever see yourself twice, or with a different face in a different room, it's because you joined under different names — often from different devices or browsers without signing in. The fix: sign in and use the same name everywhere, and you'll be one consistent suspect across all your rooms.

Not directly — your mugshot is drawn automatically from your display name, so there's no upload and no picking a specific one. But it's tied to your name: change your name and you'll get a new face. The same name always produces the same mugshot, everywhere.

That's the Daily Docket — an optional once-a-day email when the new prompt goes live, with a quick rundown of your rooms. It's opt-in: switch it on or off anytime from your account, and every email has a one-click unsubscribe. We'll never send more than one a day.

The verdict crowns the word with the most reactions from your room's most recent active day (comments break ties). No reactions that day? The jury was unmoved — no verdict. The board itself always stays in submitted order; PatchWord never ranks it.

Your streak counts the days in a row you've filed a word crime in a room. Show up daily and it climbs; miss a day and it resets to zero. Purely for bragging rights.

Your email app probably opened the link in its own built-in in-app browser instead of your real one (Chrome, Safari, etc.). Lots of apps do this — Gmail especially.

The catch: that in-app browser usually keeps a separate set of cookies from your normal browser. So even if you're signed in to PatchWord in Chrome or Safari, you can look logged-out inside the email's little browser — and it may ask you to pick a username again, like you're a brand-new suspect.

Nothing's broken, and the game works fine in there. But to keep one consistent identity, open PatchWord in your actual browser:

In Gmail, go to Settings → General settings and turn off "Open web links in Gmail." Links will then open in your default browser. (Or just copy the link and paste it into Chrome/Safari yourself.)

Three ways, same crime:

Here, in a room — the main event: private rooms with your friends, streaks, and a daily verdict that stick around. (Custom prompts are coming soon.)

On Reddit — there's a free public prompt every day at r/PatchWord. Reply with your blend; upvotes decide the verdict. No account, no commitment.

In your team's Slack — grab the day's prompt and run it in your channel in about 30 seconds. Here's how.