How to spend Rush’s two clocks

Rush gives you 90 seconds to build a deck and 30 seconds to play words. Those clocks have different jobs. The market is your planning time; the word stage is where you put a workable plan into the controls.

During the market: find a finishable set

First look for three different words using separate cards. They do not need to use every letter. With the teaching deck C/A/T/D/O/G/S/U/N/E/R/I/L/P/Y, CAT, DOG and SUN provide one simple set. Count the physical cards, especially if several candidate words need the same vowel.

Only then ask what an offer improves. A replacement should help a complete set of three words. Buying a rare letter because it looks valuable can leave you with a stronger first word and no usable third word.

Read the cost before every swap

You begin with 100 points. The first swap is free; later swaps deduct points immediately. If a 6-point shopping plan adds only 4 to your word total, you have lost 2 overall. Check the points remaining and the next swap’s displayed price instead of counting purchases as progress.

Reset Changes restores the original deck, offers and points while the market is open, but it does not restart the clock. Use it to abandon an experiment early enough to rebuild your plan.

Before Lock in Deck: a short checklist

1. Can I name three different words?
2. Can they all fit without sharing a physical card?
3. Have I counted repeated letters correctly?
4. Do the replacements improve enough to justify their cost?
5. Can I enter this plan with the real controls before 30 seconds ends?

You can lock early. Staying in the market until the final second is not itself a scoring advantage. The countdown follows lock-in or market timeout; the 30-second word clock begins after the opening animation.

During the word stage: enter, check, submit

Tap or type your first planned word, then press Play word. Do the same for the second and third. A word sitting in the input box is not yet one of your played words. The instruction line changes to help you see the next action.

Once all three are ready, Submit Round becomes available. Use it. You do not gain a bonus simply by letting the clock run down. At timeout only the last saved valid arrangement can score, and an incomplete round scores zero.

When to undo

Undoing a word frees its cards but costs time. If an alternative cannot clearly improve a complete set, finishing your existing set may be the better decision. Reset Round clears the word arrangement without restoring the clock or undoing locked market purchases.

Menu and rules panels do not pause a live clock. Practise the controls in the guided tutorial first: it uses the real layout with learning clocks paused and does not save attempts, streaks or scores.

Review one decision after the game

Use Previous Attempts to look at the words, purchases and outcome. Ask whether the shopping improved your complete word total and whether you spent word-stage time searching instead of entering a plan. Compare Rush results within Rush; the original and Dextreme use different round structures.

For the full rules, return to How to play Word Decks Rush. For the scoring arithmetic, read the bonus examples.