Is a word still worth points if you find it twice?

No. Each distinct word scores once per round, however many different paths spell it. The board says so rather than silently ignoring the second find, because a trail that was scored and a trail that was already known look identical otherwise.

Does a shorter word inside a longer one still count?

Yes. CAT and CATS are two different words and both score, and finding one does not consume the cells for the other. Cells are only locked for the duration of the word being drawn.

Why are there no two-letter words?

Because they turn the round into a sweep. There are 96 of them in the dictionary and 84 two-cell paths on a 4 × 4 grid, so a player who memorised the short list could farm points without ever reading the board. Three letters is the floor.

Can you enter a word without dragging?

Yes, and on a phone it is often easier. Tap the letters one at a time — the trail stays where it is between taps — then tap the last letter a second time to take the word. Nothing is submitted until you do, so a word tapped out four letters deep can still be extended to six.

Can a Word Hunt grid ever be unwinnable?

No. Every grid is fully solved before it is dealt and rebuilt if it holds fewer than 60 words on a 4 × 4 or 140 on a 5 × 5, and a real 5-to-7-letter word is planted in it before any filler letter is placed, so there is always something long to find.

How to Play Word Hunt

Trace a path through touching letters to spell a word. Any of the eight neighbours counts, including diagonals, and the path may cross itself — the only restriction is that no cell appears twice in one word. Words must be three letters or longer. A word scores the square of its length minus two, so three letters is 1 point and eight letters is 36.

The rules, step by step

1Start on any letterPress or click any cell in the grid. There is no fixed starting square and no letter you must include.
2Step to a touching cellDrag to any of the eight cells around the one you are on — across, down, or diagonally. The path may cross itself as often as you like.
3Never reuse a cell in one wordA cell already in the current path cannot be stepped on again. Repeated letters need repeated cells, so LEVEL needs two Ls and two Es on the board.
4Three letters or longerA path of one or two cells never scores, however good a word it spells. The minimum is three letters and there is no maximum short of the grid itself.
5Finish the word to submit itLetting go at the end of a drag submits the trail. Tapping instead of dragging leaves it standing between taps, and tapping the last letter a second time takes the word — so a seven-letter word can be entered either way.
6Beat par before the clock stopsEach round sets a par score from the grid it dealt. Reach it before the timer ends and the round is recorded as a win; miss it and it is recorded as a loss.

Try it — the rules above, running

Loading the word list…

Found · 0 · 0 points

Nothing yet.

Time3:00Score0Par0Puzzle#20260915

Drag through touching letters and let go to submit, or tap the letters one at a time and tap the last one a second time to take the word. New round deals a fresh grid at the round length you last chose, Hint lights the first cell of one word you have missed — never the whole path — for 5 points, and the three-dot menu at the end of the bar holds today’s shared puzzle, the round lengths, an end-the-round-now button and the keyboard shortcuts.

Your statistics · classic

Played: 0
Won: 0
Win rate: 0%
Streak: 0
Best streak: 0
Best time: —
Best score: —

This round

The same 4 × 4 grid with three minutes on it, and par doubles to 8% — a median of 58 points. Long enough to stop skimming for three-letter words and go looking for a seven. No 4 × 4 is dealt with fewer than 60 words in it; the median holds 127.

Keyboard

Arrows: Move around the grid
Space: Add this letter to the trail
Backspace: Take the last letter back off
Enter: Submit the trail as a word
Esc: Clear the trail
H: Hint
F: Full screen

What counts as a legal path?

1Any cell may start a wordThere is no required letter and no required corner. Press the cell you want to begin on and the trail starts there.
2Each step goes to a touching cellAll eight neighbours are legal — left, right, up, down and the four diagonals. Nothing wraps around the edge of the grid.
3A cell is used once per wordThe trail may never step back onto a cell already in it. That is the only thing that makes a path illegal.
4Crossing your own trail is fineTwo legs of the same path may cross diagonally, and the path may double back beside itself. The rule is about cells, not about shapes.
5Three cells minimumA one- or two-cell path never scores, so the 96 two-letter words in the dictionary are out of play from the start.

How do you score the most points?

Length is everything. A word scores the square of its length minus two, which makes one seven-letter word (25 points) worth as much as twenty-five three-letter ones. The fastest way to add a letter to a word you have already found is an ending: a reachable S, D or R beside a finished word is often another five to nine points for one more flick of the thumb.

Find the vowels first — every grid holds between three and five per ten cells, and long words thread through them.
Work the corners deliberately; a corner letter sits in a third as many paths as a middle one.
Re-trace found words looking for a plural, a past tense or an -er.
A hint lights the first cell of a word you have missed and costs 5 points, so it is cheap next to a six-letter find and expensive next to a three.

What do the three rounds change?

The three rounds
Round	Grid	Clock	Par	Words guaranteed
Sprint	4 × 4	90 seconds	4% of the grid, 20–80	60
Classic	4 × 4	3 minutes	8% of the grid, 40–150	60
Big grid	5 × 5	4 minutes	7% of the grid, 50–175	140

The 5 × 5 is not simply more of the same. It holds roughly twice the words — over a sample of 120 dealt grids the median is 258 against 127 for the 4 × 4 — but vastly more than twice the paths, so the extra minute is spent reading a busier board rather than finding proportionally more. It is the round where planning a sweep beats scanning at random.

How do you play Word Hunt with a keyboard?

The whole game is reachable without a pointer. Arrow keys move around the grid, Space adds the cell you are on to the trail, Backspace takes the last cell back off it, Enter submits what you have, and Escape clears the trail and starts again. Every change is announced, so the trail, the word it currently spells and what it scored are all read out rather than only shown.

Arrows — move between cells.
Space — add the current cell to the trail; it must touch the last one.
Backspace — remove the last cell.
Enter — submit the trail as a word.
Esc — clear the trail.
H — hint, F — full screen.

How do you win more often?

Sweep the endings before you hunt for wordsFind where the S, the -ED and the -ING sit, then work backwards from them. 38% of the dictionary ends in S, so an S you can reach from the end of a word you have already found is the cheapest points on the board — it turns 9 into 16 for one extra cell of dragging.
Start in the corners, not the middleA corner has three neighbours and an interior cell has eight, so corner letters appear in far fewer paths and are the ones your eye skips. Deliberately beginning a sweep at each of the four corners finds words nothing else will.
Follow the vowels, because the generator guarantees themEvery grid carries between three and five vowels in ten cells by construction. Locate them first and read outwards: 97% of the dictionary words of five letters or more hold at least two vowels, so the five to eight vowel cells on a 4 × 4 are the skeleton every long word hangs on.
Chase length rather than countA single six-letter word is worth sixteen three-letter words under this scoring, and one seven is worth twenty-five. When the clock is short, one long find is a better use of thirty seconds than a dozen quick threes.
Extend what you have already foundWords cluster: if CARE is on the board then CARED, CARES, RACE, ACRE and ACRES very often are too. Re-tracing a found word with one more cell on either end is the cheapest search there is, because you already know the hard part exists.

Common questions about word hunt

Is a word still worth points if you find it twice?: No. Each distinct word scores once per round, however many different paths spell it. The board says so rather than silently ignoring the second find, because a trail that was scored and a trail that was already known look identical otherwise.
Does a shorter word inside a longer one still count?: Yes. CAT and CATS are two different words and both score, and finding one does not consume the cells for the other. Cells are only locked for the duration of the word being drawn.
Why are there no two-letter words?: Because they turn the round into a sweep. There are 96 of them in the dictionary and 84 two-cell paths on a 4 × 4 grid, so a player who memorised the short list could farm points without ever reading the board. Three letters is the floor.
Can you enter a word without dragging?: Yes, and on a phone it is often easier. Tap the letters one at a time — the trail stays where it is between taps — then tap the last letter a second time to take the word. Nothing is submitted until you do, so a word tapped out four letters deep can still be extended to six.
Can a Word Hunt grid ever be unwinnable?: No. Every grid is fully solved before it is dealt and rebuilt if it holds fewer than 60 words on a 4 × 4 or 140 on a 5 × 5, and a real 5-to-7-letter word is planted in it before any filler letter is placed, so there is always something long to find.

Ready to stop reading? Play word hunt on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.