**Gradient tile colors** Tile colors are no longer limited to a single flat shade. New colors can blend smoothly across the tile face, and the swatch in the Styles tab shows the same gradient you'll see on the board, so what you pick is what you get. Every color you already own looks exactly the same as before. **Sneak peeks for holiday styles** New holiday tile styles can now show up in the Styles tab ahead of time, locked, with the date they open ("Unlocks Oct 17"). No more guessing what's coming or missing a drop. When the day arrives, watch videos to unlock them while the holiday is here, or pick them up with Tails afterward. **Second chances for past holidays** Missed a holiday style the first time around? After its debut year, a style can come back with both unlock options offered at once — watch a few videos or spend Tails, whichever you prefer, any time of year. Older holiday styles can eventually become free for everyone. **Clearer holiday sections** Each holiday section on the Styles tab now tells you what's happening right now: how many videos unlock a style during the holiday, when upcoming styles open, what past years' styles cost, or the Tails price outside the holiday.

Tile bounce + premium-square badges on submit Submit a word and every newly-placed tile now pops in reading order (left-to-right for horizontal words, top-to-bottom for vertical), one beat every 80 ms. Any tile that landed on a Double Letter / Triple Letter / Double Word / Triple Word square gets its own extra beat immediately after the letter pop — a tile-shaped "DL" / "TL" / "DW" / "TW" chip in the premium square's color pops in the same cell, then fades to reveal the letter. Only fires on your own play moves; plays additively alongside BINGO / new-high-score celebrations. Smoother submit Placed tiles used to disappear for a fraction of a second between clearing the pending state and the committed state landing from Firestore. Submit now waits for the local snapshot with your commit before clearing pending, so tiles stay on the board continuously and roll straight into the bounce. Redesigned end-game screen The game-over popup is now a full branded bottom sheet (same kitsune backdrop as the in-app-message sheet) instead of a plain dialog. Three-band layout so nothing scrolls the buttons off-screen: • Pinned top — drag handle • Scrollable middle (with an amber scrollbar) — win/lose/tie title, congratulations line, best-word showcase, final score rows • Pinned bottom — Share (when eligible), View board, Home, Play Again Best-word tile showcase The sheet finds your highest-scoring play of the game, picks its longest word, and renders each letter as a real Kitsune tile in whatever tile color you have equipped — same render path the live board uses. Skipped gracefully when you never scored a play. Share your win — or your best word Multiplayer games get a Share button that adapts to the outcome: • If you won: "Share your win" captures a composed "You Won!" card with a KITSUNE wordmark, trophy, your best word rendered as tiles, and the final score vs your opponent. Post it anywhere. • If you didn't win (or tied): "Share best word" shares just the best-word tile row PNG. • Solo / bot games don't show the share button at all. Discoverable "View board" dismiss The old title-bar close icon is replaced with a labelled "View board" button in the pinned actions row — much easier to spot. Tap it to peek at the finished board without leaving the game; Home leaves; Play Again rematches with the same opponent (or bot difficulty).

**Add friends in person, instantly** New **Add Friend** hub, reachable from a new button on the Friends screen and from the New Game sheet. Two big buttons: **Show My Code** and **Scan a Code**. Show My Code fills the screen with your personal QR code and keeps the screen from sleeping while it's up, so someone else can point their camera at it. Scan a Code opens the in-app camera scanner. Successful scan? You're friends immediately — no pending request, no waiting for the other side to accept. Since you're both physically together, that step doesn't help anyone. **Permanent friend codes for remote adds** Every player now has a permanent 8-character friend code, formatted like `ABCD-WXYZ`. It's shown on the Show My Code screen (tap to copy) and in a new Friend Code section in Settings. Share yours with a remote friend and they can add you from anywhere using the new **Add by friend code** screen. Remote adds still go through a friend request that the recipient has to accept, since you can't verify identity over a shared code the way you can with an in-person scan. The pending path is the same one the old invite link uses. If you ever need a fresh code — Settings → Friend Code → Regenerate. The old code stops working immediately. **Friend-request notifications** A red dot now appears on the **Friends icon** at the top of the home screen whenever someone is waiting for you to accept their request, and the **Requests tab** label carries the same dot inside the Friends screen. Both are live — they clear the moment you accept or decline the last pending request. On top of that, if you have unseen incoming requests when you open the app, a short bottom-sheet popup surfaces them with a **View** button that jumps straight to Requests, or a **Later** button that hides those specific requests until brand-new ones arrive. It won't re-nag you on every launch about the same request you've already seen. **Bingo and new-high-score celebrations** Play all 7 tiles from your rack in a single move, or beat your personal best game score, and the board now bursts into embers, wisps, and leaves with a big **BINGO!** or **NEW HIGH SCORE!** callout. Only fires on your own play moves — passes, swaps, and opponent turns are quiet. When both conditions apply on the same move, the new-high-score animation wins. **Bug fix — deep-link invites land on the right tab** Tapping a friend-invite link (from a text or an email) used to land you on the Friends tab even though the invite created a pending request in the Requests tab. Fixed — invites now open directly on the Requests tab so you can see and accept the request without hunting for it.

Browse and search the full Kitsune dictionary New "Word List" item in the hamburger menu, between Settings and Ad Policy. Browse and search every word Kitsune accepts as a valid play — 195,000+ entries — with either "Starts with" (prefix) or "Contains" (substring) matching. Tap any word to open the same definition sheet the in-game Definition button uses. Everything runs on the bundled word list, so browsing works offline. Regular plurals are hidden from the browsing list so results aren't cluttered with "cat / cats / cabin / cabins" — instead the base word gets a small "+ plural" badge. The validator still accepts every plural in play; this is just a browsing convenience. Styles tab redesign The Styles screen is now organized as compact preview strips with "See All" modals instead of one long grid plus expandable holiday sections. Each section shows the first four items in a horizontal row with a "See All" tile at the end when there's more behind it; tapping opens a fullscreen 3-column grid of every item in that section. Move Highlight is now its own top-level tab on the Styles screen, alongside Tile Styles. A live preview at the top shows a sample tile rendered in your equipped tile color with the currently-selected Move Highlight overlaid, so you can see exactly what each option looks like before committing. Weekly Score Challenge — Tier 5 A new top milestone above the existing 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 pt tiers. Cross 500 points in a week and the game rolls one of your currently-locked collectibles and credits 1 ad-watches of progress toward its unlock. Cross Tier 5 multiple weeks and each roll is independent — the same item might get picked twice (stacking progress toward one unlock) or a different one each time. Standing-choice unlocks Non-holiday locked cards now show BOTH unlock paths side by side: a watch video progress button AND a Tails button. Pick whichever each time you view the card — the first path to complete unlocks the item permanently. Grinding a standing item on the same day you're grinding a holiday style still pulls from the shared 5-per-day ad cap. Quieter objectives No more mid-game "Objective Complete!" popup interrupting your turn. Instead, an amber dot appears on the in-game 3-dot menu, and the "Objectives" item inside that menu carries the same dot until you tap through. Rewards are unchanged — only the interruption is gone. Bug fixes The in-game "Definition" sheet works again. It used to hit a third-party dictionary API that had gone silently unresponsive, showing every player a misleading "check your network" message on perfectly good networks. It now sources definitions from Wikimedia's Wiktionary and distinguishes real network failures from service outages, unknown-word entries, and other error modes with distinct messages. Looking up plural forms like "zas" or "mbaqangas" no longer returns unhelpful stub definitions like "plural form of za" — the lookup now auto-resolves to the base word's real definition with a small note explaining what happened. Restored 328 legitimate ENABLE1 words that had been accidentally trimmed out of the bundled dictionary at some point (mostly -itides medical plurals and compound nouns like "chickenpox", "steakhouse", "bellybutton", "fortuneteller"). No words were removed.

**Nudge stalled opponents from your home screen** Waiting on a friend? When it's their turn on any of your active multiplayer games, you'll see a new bell icon on that game's row on your home screen. Tap it and we'll send them a push notification asking them to take their turn. Guardrails keep it polite: your opponent has to have been sitting on their turn for at least 24 hours before your first nudge, then one nudge per 24 hours, five nudges max per game. If you send all five and 24 more hours pass with still no move, the bell turns into a red flag — tap it to end the game and record it as a win for you. The existing red resign flag stays on every active game row (whether it's your turn or theirs), so quitting a stuck game is unchanged. **10 new tile colors in the Styles tab** Onyx (matte black), Silver (cool metallic gray), Cocoa (rich chocolate brown), Indigo (deep blue-violet), Cyan (bright turquoise), Fern (grass green), Peach (warm salmon), Magenta (hot pink), Plum (deep royal purple), and Blush (soft rose-pink). They join the existing 12 in Tile Colors, and use the same 100-Orb unlock system — new orbs drop from daily login streaks, objective completions, and weekly rewards just like the originals. **Labor Day Holiday Special** Four new limited-time commemorative tile styles at the top of the Styles tab (below Move Highlight) for the two weeks before Labor Day through one week after: Denim — a real denim-fabric background. Free for everyone. Wheat Gold — an amber-to-yellow gradient with a wheat sheaf illustration in the bottom-right. Corn — a copper gradient with a corn cob that shades yellow at the kernels and green toward the leaves. Wrench — a gunmetal gradient with a wrench silhouette rotated across the tile. **How the gated Labor Day styles unlock** Wheat Gold, Corn, and Wrench start locked. During the 14 days before Labor Day (September 7, 2026), you can unlock each by watching 15 short video ads for that specific style. Fresh 5-per-day cap on Labor Day ads — that's separate from the Tile Colors ads' 3/day cap, so you can farm both flows in the same day (up to 8 total). After Labor Day passes, remaining locked styles switch to a flat 1,500 Tails cost. Once unlocked (by either method) they stay unlocked permanently. Wheat Gold, Corn, and Wrench are 2026-only for the ad-watch route — from next year's Labor Day onward they stay Tails-only, and new video-ad styles will arrive for that year.

**Head-to-Head Stats** Ever wondered exactly how you stack up against a specific friend? Now you can see it. Tap the new bar-chart icon on any Friends row, or tap your opponent's name/score in the game header, or open the game's 3-dot menu, you'll get a side-by-side comparison of every stat we track, scoped to just your matchup with that one person. Different opponent, different numbers. **What you'll see** Record and win percentage against that opponent. Current and best win streaks specific to this matchup. Total points, average game score, and best single game for each of you. Longest word each of you has played. Highest-scoring word. A mirrored word-length histogram, your bars grow left, theirs grow right. High-value plays broken out into 20+, 30+, 50+, and 100+ point tiers. Premium-letter counts (Q, Z, X, J) for both sides. **Your history is included** The first time you open head-to-head for a given opponent, both sides are automatically aggregated from every completed multiplayer game the two of you have ever played together, you don't need to start from zero. Every game completion after that keeps the stats fresh automatically, and the screen loads instantly on repeat visits. **Objective completion dialog** When you complete a daily objective, you now get a centered tap-to-dismiss dialog with the objective name, tails earned, and orb reward. When several complete on the same turn, they all appear together in that same dialog, no more snackbars stacking up at the bottom of the screen fighting for attention.

**Celebrate 250 years with free commemorative tile styles** America turns 250, and we're celebrating with four limited-time tile styles — completely free for every player. No Orbs to collect, no Tails to spend. Find them in the new Holiday Special section at the top of the Styles tab. **Patriot** A red, white, and blue diagonal gradient sweeps across each tile with crisp navy lettering. Subtle enough to play with every day, patriotic enough to make a statement. **America 250 — two companion designs** Deep navy tiles framed in gold, with a large "250" stamped diagonally across each tile like a commemorative coin — a quiet nod to 250 years. Prefer to spell it out? A second variant stretches "AMERICA 250" edge to edge instead. Either way the stamp sits softly behind your letters, which stay crisp and white against the navy. **Fireworks** Our first animated tile style! Each tile becomes a slice of night sky with three staggered firework bursts — red, gold, white, and blue — looping continuously on both your rack and the board. **Two new holiday move highlights** At the end of the Move Highlight row you'll find Star Spangled — a red, white, and blue gradient border around your last played move — and Patriot Pulse, an animated glow that smoothly cycles through the flag colors. Both free, like all our highlight colors. These are commemorative styles: once added, they're available permanently. Tap any of them in the Styles tab to equip.

**Shrine tiles now stay marked** When you play a tile on a Shrine bonus square, it gains a permanent animated wavy border for the rest of the game — plus a small label in the corner showing the bonus type (DL, TL, DW, or TW). Your opponent can see exactly why you scored big, and the indicator persists even after you close and reopen the app. **Personalize your display name** Edit your display name in Settings → Profile. By default opponents see "First L" (first name + last initial). Check "Show full name" if you'd prefer the full version shown. **Improved tile draw balance** Changes were made to help reduce excessive same-vowel draws in a single draw

**No more accidental passes!** Tapping Pass now shows a quick confirmation before skipping your turn — one of the most-requested quality-of-life fixes. **"No valid moves" always shows** The orange warning banner that appears when you have no valid plays now shows up reliably, even after your opponent just played a word or passed. **Review the final board** The game-over screen can now be closed with the × button so you can inspect the full board before heading back to your games list. **Ad display fixes** Banner ads are now correctly shown or hidden based on your device's physical screen size

**Pick your move highlight color!** Head to the Styles tab to choose from 6 glowing accent colors — Amber, Cyan, Emerald, Rose, White, or Black — and personalize how last-played tiles appear on the board. It's a free cosmetic, no Tails required. **Earn Orbs by watching optional video ads** A "Watch Ad" button now appears on locked tile colors in the Styles tab. Watch a short clip to earn Orbs toward unlocking that color. These are completely voluntary and never shown mid-game. Banner ads have also been added to a few screens to help support ongoing development. Thanks for playing!

Power-up inventory Players can now own and stockpile power-ups earned on Day 7 of the login streak. Chips show an owned count (×N) and consume inventory before spending Tails. All power-ups show a confirmation dialog with description and cost before activating. Tile color cosmetics & Styles tab Unlock 12 tile colors (Crimson, Sapphire, Emerald, Amber, Violet, Rose, Slate, Teal, Gold, Midnight, Coral, Lavender) by collecting 100 color-specific Orbs. A new Styles tab on the home screen tracks your progress and lets you equip or swap colors. Orb rewards Orbs drop from login streaks (Days 3–7) and daily objective completions. Each objective pre-rolls its orb color so you can see exactly what you'll earn before completing it. Colored orb chips appear on the objectives screen, in-game snackbar, and the login streak sheet. Bug fixes • Daily and weekly objectives now refresh immediately when the app resumes on a new day or week • Daily reward bonus label no longer clips on narrow screens

New tabbed home screen (Stats / Games / Objectives) Daily & weekly objectives with Tails rewards Objectives now have their own dedicated tab Stats moved out of the menu for easier access Bug fix: friend invite links on iOS now open the app correctly

Solo Mode — Play against a bot at Easy, Medium, or Hard difficulty. Great for practice! New Power-Ups — Two new ways to gain an edge: Peek reveals the remaining tiles in the bag, and Shrine Bonus lets you place a score-multiplier shrine anywhere on the board Rules & Tips — New in-game dialogs so you always have the rules handy Auto-zoom on drop — The board automatically zooms to your tile placement after each move Smarter game endings — Games now end correctly when both players are stuck and can't move Welcome gift — New players receive 500 Tails to spend on power-ups right away Bug fixes and performance improvements