Word Snake gives you a grid of letters and a list of clues that refuse to show you the whole word. Each clue shows the first letter and the last letter. If the word is six letters or longer, it also shows the middle letter. You drag a path through adjacent letters to spell it. The path is the snake. It can turn. It can only step to a neighbouring letter. The word has to sit in the grid in that connected shape, and it has to be at least four letters long.
The clue is a skeleton, not a definition. A pattern like C, blank, blank, blank, E might be a dozen words until you look at which letters are actually next to that C. The grid is the constraint that makes the skeleton unique. There is a tutorial when you want the drag shown to you first. One snake arrives each day, and previous days stay in the archive.
How a round works
- Each clue shows the first and last letter. Words of six letters or more also show the middle letter.
- Drag through adjacent letters to spell the word.
- Words must be four letters or longer.
- The shown letters have to match the path. A route that spells a different word does not lock.
While you drag, the known slots are checkpoints. If the first cell of your path is not the clue’s first letter, you are spelling something else. That sounds obvious, and it is the main way a promising snake dies. For a longer word, the middle letter is a checkpoint halfway along the path. If that step is wrong, turn around before you invent a detour that can never fit the skeleton.
How to find the drawable word
Start with the clues that show a middle letter, or with a rare letter, because they have fewer routes. A short four-letter clue made of common letters can wait. It will still be there when the grid has fewer decoys, and a common word is much easier to see once the rare paths have been claimed.
Park on the known letter and walk outward. Crossword instinct helps you name the word. Path instinct helps you find whether that word is actually drawable. Both have to agree. A word that is right as English and disconnected in the grid will never lock, no matter how sure you are. Equally, a connected path that ignores the shown middle letter is a different word wearing a familiar shape.
If two clues could share a region of the grid, solve the stricter one first. The stricter clue is usually the longer word, or the one whose shown letters include something awkward. Clearing it removes a thicket of decoy routes from the shorter clues next door.
Where it sits
Word Snake sits between a crossword and a path puzzle. It is a good companion to Zanagrams if you like letters in space: Zanagrams hides the words and shows you every letter, while Word Snake shows you a skeleton and asks you to find the route. It is a good change of pace from 9 Words if you want the same love of spelling without a thirty-second clock.
If you would rather rebuild a sentence than trace a path, Definitions swaps words in place and tells you, by colour, when a word has found its home.