In one sentence: this site was built with substantial AI assistance, its word games run on ordinary deterministic code rather than generative AI, and its definitions come from human-written dictionary sources — not from a language model.
1. Why this page exists
The US Federal Trade Commission expects claims about artificial intelligence to be truthful, specific, and substantiated — including claims that something is AI-powered. This page states plainly where AI is and is not involved at LettersSay, so nobody has to guess.
2. AI in how the site was built
A large part of this site's code, page copy and structure was written with the help of AI coding assistants, with human direction and review. That includes game logic, layout, and much of the explanatory text you read on game and word pages.
We think you should know that. It does not mean the pages are unreviewed — see section 7 — but it does mean AI was materially involved in producing this site.
3. How the games actually work
Despite the "Powered by AI" badge in our footer, the games themselves do not use generative AI or machine learning at run time. They use conventional, deterministic algorithms:
- Word finding and anagrams — letter-frequency matching against a fixed word list.
- Scrabble and Words With Friends scores — fixed published tile values, added up.
- Daily puzzles — a seeded pseudo-random function keyed to the date, so everyone gets the same puzzle. Nothing is generated by a model.
- Syllables, rhymes, palindromes, readability — rule-based text algorithms.
- Leaderboards and scoring — arithmetic validation on our servers.
These produce identical output for identical input, every time. That is a deliberate design choice: word games need to be reproducible and verifiable.
4. Where the words and definitions come from
| Content | Source | AI-generated? |
|---|---|---|
| Valid word list | SOWPODS / Collins tournament word list | No |
| Definitions, parts of speech, examples | Free Dictionary API, derived from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0) | No — human-written by Wiktionary contributors |
| Name meanings and origins | Behind the Name (CC BY-SA 4.0) | No — human-compiled |
| Pronunciations | Wiktionary / Wikimedia Commons | No |
| Statistical page text (letter counts, score breakdowns, word totals) | Computed from the data on that page | Template-generated, not model-generated |
| Explanatory and marketing copy | Written with AI assistance, human-reviewed | Partly |
The descriptive paragraphs on our word pages are assembled by templates from real computed values — letter counts, syllables, tile scores, result totals. They are not invented by a language model, which is why they can be checked against the data shown on the same page.
5. What is not AI-generated
To be explicit, we do not use a language model to invent definitions, etymologies, example sentences, name meanings, or word validity. If a definition appears on this site, it came from a dictionary source, not from a model asked to make one up. We consider fabricated reference content unacceptable on a site people use to settle word disputes.
6. Accuracy and limitations
Our sources are good but not perfect, and we do not claim otherwise:
- Dictionaries disagree. A word valid in SOWPODS may be invalid under other tournament rules.
- Wiktionary-derived definitions are crowd-sourced and can be incomplete, dated, or occasionally wrong.
- Syllable counting and readability scoring use heuristics that are imperfect for irregular words.
- Some entries have sparse data. We mark low-quality pages so they are not promoted in search results.
- AI-assisted copy can contain mistakes that review did not catch.
Do not rely on LettersSay as an authority for competitive, academic or professional purposes. Check an official dictionary or your tournament's rules.
7. Human oversight
A human operator directs what gets built, reviews changes before they go live, and is accountable for what this site publishes. Automated quality checks additionally screen generated pages for missing definitions, malformed text and unsuitable terms, and exclude failing pages from search indexing. Responsibility for the result rests with us, not with a tool.
8. Your data is not used to train AI
We do not sell, share or supply your gameplay, scores, email address or account data to anyone for AI or machine-learning training, and we do not use it to train models ourselves. See our Privacy Policy for the full picture.
9. Contact
Questions about how AI is used here, or a correction to report: legal@letterssay.com. If you find an inaccurate definition or page, tell us and we will fix or remove it.
Last updated: 4 August 2026. We post changes to this page and update the date above. Material changes are announced by email to subscribers.