Spelling Duel

How to play Spelling Duel

1. Choose the words before you start: Short words, Longer words or Tricky words (see the lists below).
2. Players take turns. The coloured strip at the top shows whose turn it is, and one mark for each word: mint for right, coral for wrong.
3. On your turn, tap Hear my word. The device says the word. Tap Hear it again as often as you like, or In a sentence to hear it used in a sentence. The sentence is also written on the card, with a gap where the word goes.
4. Spell the word on the letter keyboard, one letter at a time. The delete key takes away the last letter.
5. Tap Done. A right spelling scores a point. If it's wrong, the game shows the right spelling and marks the letters that were wrong or missing.
6. After five words each, the player with more right spellings wins the round. If one player can't catch up any more, the round ends early.
7. A tie goes to sudden death. Each player spells one more word, taken from the next harder list. If one gets it right and the other doesn't, they win. If you're still level, you go again. After five tied sudden-death pairs the round is a draw.

Each player gets different words, and no word comes up twice in a round. The player who goes first changes every round.

The word lists

Every word comes with its own short sentence, so you always know which word is meant. Words that are spelled differently in American and British English, such as color and colour, are left out, so every word here has one right spelling. Words that sound exactly like another common word, such as sea and see, are left out too.

Hearing the words

Spelling Duel uses the voice built into your browser to say each word, so nothing extra needs to load. It picks an American English voice if your device has one, then a British one, then any English voice. Voices differ a little between phones and computers, so if a word sounds unclear, tap In a sentence.

Make sure the sound is on: the speaker button at the top right of the game turns all sound on and off, the voice included.

No voice? You can still play. Some devices have no English voice, and sometimes you need to play quietly. Tap No sound? See each word instead, and from then on each word appears for a few seconds and then hides before you spell it. Longer words stay up a little longer. The switch counts for both players for the rest of the round, so the game stays fair. If your device has no English voice at all, the game starts this way by itself.

Controls

The game uses its own letter keyboard rather than your phone's, so autocorrect and word suggestions can't spell the word for you.

Computer levels

The computer hears its word just like you do, so you can hear and see what it's spelling. It takes a moment to think, then types one letter at a time, and it gets more words wrong as they get harder. Its mistakes are the kind people make: a double letter left single, ie and ei swapped, a vowel you can't hear clearly, or a silent letter left out.

Easy is a good match for a young child on short words. Expert rarely slips, so beating it on tricky words takes real spelling skill, and often sudden death.

Spelling tips

• Say it slowly, in parts. Break a long word into syllables and spell one part at a time: re-mem-ber, um-brel-la. For words with a letter you don't hear, say them the way they're written in your head: Wed-nes-day, Feb-ru-ary.
• Listen to the sentence. It tells you which word is meant and often helps you picture it.
• Watch for double letters. Necessary has one c and two s's: think of a shirt with one collar and two sleeves. Accommodate and embarrass both double two different letters.
• Find a word inside the word. There's a rat in sepa rate, a lie in believe, and land in island.
• Know the silent letters. The k in knock, the b in thumb, the t in listen and whistle, the n in autumn and the u in guard make no sound, so you have to remember them.
• Be careful with "i before e". The rhyme "i before e, except after c" works for believe, receive and ceiling, but plenty of words break it, such as weird, height, foreign, leisure and science. Learn those by heart.
• Check the ending. Endings that sound the same are a common trap: noticeable but visible, maintenance but existence.
• Picture it before you tap. Spell the whole word in your head first, then type it. A wrong letter can be deleted, but only until you tap Done.

For parents and teachers

Spelling Duel turns spelling practice into a friendly contest. Hearing a word and writing it down is how most school spelling tests work, and the sentence on the card helps children use the word in context. The look-and-spell mode works like the "look, cover, write, check" method many schools use: look at the word, cover it, spell it, then check.

Choose Short words for children who are just starting to spell, Longer words for confident readers and Tricky words for older children and adults. Turns are slow and calm, with no clock, so two children can share one tablet at a desk, or a child can play the computer on Easy. There's no sign-up, nothing to install and no ads during a game. See our page for parents and teachers for more games that suit school.

Questions

Updated 10 November 2026