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Notes from the organizer: What’s the last thing you want if you’re leading an Apto tournament at the midway point? Probably a chasing pack headed by Matthew B and Tom C and tournament specialist Mike L breathing down your neck. Welcome to Miram, Adam and Stu’s world. Miriam leads having safely navigated round 5, with Adam and Stu yet to tackle it.

Full leaderboard - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YSYOdmZKGElwGkMRG89M4PBvmvH6vu-9/edit?gid=1911279472#gid=1911279472&range=A1:M1

In a slight alteration to the advertised schedule (I spotted a fundamental flaw with A LA MODE) we now enter three new rounds for 2025.

Played across a Standard Letters Attack, the aim of The Staircase is to build words round-by-round that are consecutively one letter longer than the last.

You can start in round 1 with any length word you want, then you simply have to increase your word length by exactly one letter each round. So if you start in round 1 with a four-letter word, round 2 would need to be five, round 3 six, round 4 seven etc.

When you reach a point where you feel you can no longer keep climbing the staircase (or you get to and successfully play a nine-letter word), you can keep your game scoring going by simply reverting to the bottom of the stairs by declaring a one-letter word instead to start the climbing process again.

Any invalid words, non-declarations or words to aren’t one letter longer than your previous word (i.e. not reverting back to a one letter word when necessary) will see your game score end.

A 5 point bonus is on offer for making it all the way up to the top of the staircase and playing a valid nine-letter word once.
An additional bumper 25 point bonus is on offer for scaling the staircase twice and playing two valid nine-letter words.

Example game:

RELATION
A (no nine-letter word spotted, so I decided to revert back to one)
TO
BUT
MAIM
EXTRA
DEBATE
DECODED
RAINIEST
TRIANGLES (5 point bonus for the nine-letter word)
E
TO
AND
BARK
MOTOR
ARDENT
A (couldn’t find a 7 letter word so kept game going by reverting back to one-letter word)
BY
THE
WHO (GAME OVER - a four-letter word was needed, or a revert back to a one-letter word)

SCORE: 85 (80 game score + 5 point nine-letter word bonus)

Good luck.

Runs from: 16 November – 30 December 2025. Format: Letters Attack. Matches: One-off. Approved.

Fixtures: 49. Completed: 4.

Results and fixtures

Key. Green: winner. Red: loser. Grey: tie. (Stripes: provisional, match in progress.)