Daily Puzzle + Unlimited Practice
Remember word searches? Strands takes the idea and makes it interesting. Every puzzle hides a handful of themed words in a 6×8 letter grid — plus one spangram, the word that sums up the whole theme and stretches from edge to edge. Words bend at every letter, and every letter gets used exactly once, so each find makes the rest of the board easier to crack. There's a fresh daily puzzle every morning, and unlimited practice boards whenever you're on a roll. Free to play, right in your browser.
See a board in action, then five things to know before your first game — you'll be tracing words in under a minute.
Snake out theme words
Words bend in any direction and turn at any letter. Found words lock in blue.
Span the whole board
The spangram describes the theme and stretches from one edge to the opposite edge. It locks in yellow.
Stuck? Take a hint
Spell three 4+ letter words to fill the meter — a hint lights up a hidden word's path.
Find words hidden in the 6×8 letter grid. Words match the day's theme and can run in any direction — horizontal, vertical, or diagonal — and may change direction at every letter.
Drag across neighboring letters (or tap them one by one) to spell a word. Tap the last letter again to submit, or tap the previous letter to step back.
Theme words you find lock in blue. One special word — the spangram — describes the whole theme and must stretch from one edge of the grid to the opposite edge. It locks in yellow.
Every theme word plus the spangram uses each letter on the board exactly once, so the whole grid fills up when you win.
Stuck? Spell any valid non-theme word of 4+ letters to charge the hint meter. Fill all three bars and press Hint to reveal one hidden word's path.
Everything people usually ask before their first board — spangrams, hints, daily mode, and where to find old puzzles.
It's a word search with a brain. You get a 6×8 grid of letters and a theme, and every word hiding in the grid relates to that theme. The star of the show is the spangram — one word that captures the whole theme and runs from one edge of the board to the other.
Drag through neighboring letters (or tap them one by one) to spell a word. Words can go in any direction and turn at every letter, so they zigzag all over the grid. Tap the last letter again to submit. Find every theme word plus the spangram, and the board fills up completely — that's a win.
The spangram is the one word that sums up the entire puzzle. It has to touch two opposite edges of the grid — top to bottom or side to side — and it turns yellow when you find it. Regular theme words turn blue. When you're stuck, hunting the spangram first often unlocks the whole board.
Completely free, and there's nothing to download or install. Open the page in any browser — phone, tablet, or computer — and you're playing. The daily puzzle is free, practice mode is free, everything.
Here's the deal: any real word of 4+ letters that isn't part of the theme still counts for something — it charges your hint meter. Three bonus words fill all three bars and earn you a hint, which lights up the letters of one hidden word without telling you what it spells.
Yes — that's what practice mode is for. The daily puzzle gives you one new board each day (the same one everyone else gets), and practice mode serves up unlimited random boards whenever you want another round.
Yep. The Strands archive keeps previous daily puzzles, so you can replay any day you missed or open that puzzle's hints & answers article if you'd rather see how it was meant to be solved.
A classic word search hands you the word list and every word runs in a straight line. Strands only gives you a theme — you figure out which words exist. Words bend at every letter, and every letter on the board is used exactly once, so each find genuinely shrinks the puzzle.