I misspelled a word of my seed: why that is a clue, not a problem

Why a typo helps

Valid words come from a closed list. If you wrote «abandom» instead of a listed word, the wallet spots it instantly. And here is the good part: the words on that list were chosen precisely so they don’t resemble each other. Each word is determined by its first four letters, so almost any typo leaves only one or two plausible candidates.

Practical result: a misspelled word is almost never a recovery case. It is a case of looking at the list and seeing which word you meant.

The mistake that does destroy information

Don’t «fix» the word by eye before describing the case, and above all don’t rewrite the whole sheet «neatly», correcting whatever looks off. A specific typo points at a spot; a correction made by eye can replace it with another valid but wrong word, and then you no longer even know where the fault was.

Common cases and what they mean

What you see	What it usually means
A word the wallet won’t accept	A typo: identified by checking the list
All valid but «invalid phrase»	One word was swapped for another that also exists
All valid, phrase valid, zero balance	Not a typo: look at other causes
Unsure between two similar words	Two attempts and you’re done

The second row is the interesting case: all your words exist, but the phrase fails the check. That means one of them is a real word, just not yours. There is work to do, and it is exactly the same work as a missing word, so the outlook is good: read I’m missing one word of my 12-word phrase.

And if the phrase is valid and you still see a zero balance, spelling is not the issue. The causes are listed in I have the phrase but the wallet shows empty.

Why a typo helps

The mistake that does destroy information

Common cases and what they mean

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