RANSOM: Word Cut Puzzle

You've been given a note to deliver. The letters have to come from the words on the page — cut them out, one at a time, in the order the note needs them. But every word you cut a letter from has to still read as a word afterwards. Take the H out of CHART and you get CART. Take the C and you get HART. Take the A and you get a mess. That's the whole rule. It sounds simple. It is not. RANSOM is a paper-and-scissors word puzzle with one uncompromising constraint: what stays on the strip has to still be a word. Some cuts look perfectly legal until you follow them through and find the note can never be finished. Those dead ends are handed straight back to you at no cost, because a dead end is a planning problem, not a mistake. Only cutting a word into nonsense costs you a strike. Three strikes and the note is ruined. FIVE DIFFICULTY TIERS Lookout is forgiving. Boss is not. A NEW DAILY NOTE One fresh puzzle every day, the same one for everyone. Solve it, share a spoiler-free result grid, keep the streak alive. Miss a day and a weekly streak freeze covers you once. A TEN-CHAPTER STORY Each chapter is two to four notes cut from a single persistent page. The strips do not reset between notes, so you have to ration your letters across the whole job on one meter of three strikes. THE DROP. THE PICKUP. THE WITNESS. THE END. HINTS AND UNDO A hint names the strip holding the letter you need — never the tile, so you are still the one solving it. Undo takes back a cut you regret. You get both free every day. DAILY MISSIONS Three every day. Clear all three and you are paid in hints. NO ACCOUNTS, NO SIGN-UP, NO SERVER Your progress, stats and streaks live on your device and nowhere else. The puzzles are generated on the phone, so the game plays with no connection at all. FAIR RULES, HONEST FEEDBACK Tap the wrong letter and the strip shakes — that costs nothing. Get to the last letter without ruining three words and the note is delivered. For anyone who wanted a daily word puzzle where the constraint bites harder.