Word Hunt

An eight-by-eight grid of letters with six real four-letter words buried in it — across, down, diagonally, forwards and backwards. You claim a word by naming its two ends: the cell its first letter sits in, then the cell its last letter sits in. Wrong claims cost you, so read the line before you commit to it.

It runs entirely on your device: 0 network requests, works offline. No ads, no account, nothing to buy, and no betting, money or prizes of any kind.

1. Read the word list above the grid. Those six words are all on the board, guaranteed — the board is built around them.
2. Focus the board — click it, or press Tab until it is outlined.
3. Move the cursor with the arrow keys, or WASD. It clamps at the edges rather than wrapping, so you never lose your place mid-line.
4. Pick the first letter with Enter or Space. The cell gets a ▶ mark.
5. Pick the last letter the same way. The two cells must lie on one straight line — same row, same column, or an exact diagonal — and the letters between them are read in that order.
6. Right? The word is crossed off the list and its cells are marked ✓. Wrong? You are told exactly what the line spelled, and it costs one try.
7. Changed your mind? Press Esc, Backspace or pick the same cell again to unpick it. That is free — only a completed wrong claim costs a try.
8. Find all six before the tries run out.

How do you find words in a word search grid quickly?

Scan by direction, not by eye. Take one direction at a time — left to right, then top to bottom, then the two diagonals — and sweep the whole grid for the first letter of the word you are hunting, ignoring everything else. Each hit is one line to read and reject in a couple of seconds. Doing it that way turns a 64-cell board into a short list of candidates, and it is far faster than staring at the whole grid hoping a word pops out, because your eye is only ever matching one letter against one direction. Start with the rarest first letter on your list: fewer hits, fewer lines to read.

Are all six words really on the board?

Yes, always, and that is guaranteed by how the board is made rather than checked afterwards. The six words are placed first, into positions and directions chosen at random but checked so that wherever two words cross they agree on the shared letter. Only then are the leftover cells filled in — so a hidden word can never be overwritten, clipped by an edge, or left off. A separate scanner re-reads all 260 straight four-cell lines of the finished board and confirms every listed word is readable; that check runs over dozens of boards in the test suite, not just the one you get.

Why do the filler letters look so much like the words?

Because they are drawn from the words themselves. If the filler were random letters of the alphabet, the only Z on the board would be a giant arrow pointing at the answer, and a word made of ordinary letters would stand out as the one plain-looking run on a board full of Xs and Qs. Filling from the same letter pool as the hidden words is the camouflage doing its job.

Why is there a limit on wrong picks?

Because without one the game cannot be lost, cannot be scored, and does not ask anything of you — you could sweep every line at random until the words fell out. A budget turns scanning into verification: read the line, then claim it. The number of tries is not fixed by hand either, it is computed from the board. Before you start, the scanner counts every line that opens with one of your words' first letters but does not spell it — the false leads you will have to read and reject — and a board with more of those grants more tries.

Is there any money, betting or in-app purchase in this?

None, and there never will be. No currency, no prizes, nothing to buy, no lives to refill, and no wager of any kind. It is a puzzle.

Can I play it with a keyboard or a screen reader?

Both, with the same rules — that is exactly why a word is claimed by naming two cells rather than by dragging across them. Arrows move, Enter picks, Esc unpicks. Every cell is a real button with a spoken label giving its column, its row, its letter and whether it belongs to a found word, and the live region announces how many words and tries are left after every move. Found cells and the chosen start cell carry a ✓ and a ▶, so nothing on the board depends on telling colours apart.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Once the page has loaded once, the whole game is on your device — the grid, the word list, the rules and the scoring. Nothing is fetched while you play, and there is no server involved at any point.

Eight by eight, six words, all four letters long, drawn from this site's own list of 1292 common English four-letter words. Eight directions, so 260 possible lines. The try budget runs from four to eight depending on how many false leads the board contains. There is no timer, no daily streak to protect and no hint button — the word list is the hint.

Word Ladder is the other word game here that rewards planning over vocabulary: it asks you to turn one word into another a single letter at a time. Anagram Rush works the opposite way round — the letters are given and the words are what you have to see.

Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) or install the app — it works offline the next time you need it.