Editorial difficulty

Difficulty is a calibrated experience, not simply the length or rarity of a word. The engine combines authored entry metadata with scramble and phrase signals, then applies lane-specific thresholds and ranking weights.

The three current lanes are easy, normal, and hard. A good theme has enough entries in each requested lane and enough structural variety that the engine does not need to repeat the same strategy or relax anti-repeat constraints.

When calibrating a theme, inspect the distribution, not only the average. A high average can hide a thin easy lane; a broad distribution can still contain unreadable outliers. Theme creation, analysis, and benchmarks should be treated as one workflow.