Zanagrams hides a set of words inside sixteen letters. The letters are not a bag you rearrange. They sit in place, joined by bridges, and a word is a path you can actually walk. Drag along those bridges, or type the word once you can see it. Words have to be at least four letters. When a word is found, letters and bridges that are no longer needed fall away, so the board gets quieter as you get it right.
That disappearing is the pleasure of the game. A knot becomes a few leftovers, then nothing. There is no thirty-second guillotine. The first time you open Zanagrams, a short tutorial walks you through one small board so the drag makes sense before the daily puzzle does.
How a round works
- Drag along the bridges between the letters to spell a hidden word, or type it.
- Words must be four letters or longer.
- The required words are the ones that solve the day. Extra words can sit on the same bridges, and finding them is optional.
- Letters and paths disappear once nothing left on the board still needs them.
Tiles are shared. A letter can belong to more than one word, and it stays until the last word that needs it has been found. That is why the board does not collapse after the first success, and why a letter you were sure was “used up” is sometimes still sitting there. Trust the removal when it does happen. The puzzle is built so found words clear the way, not so you have to hold the whole tangle in your head until the end.
One puzzle arrives each day. Progress and the streak are kept for that calendar day, and older boards stay in the archive.
How to loosen a stuck board
If you are stuck, stop searching for a clever word and search for a forced one. A rare letter — J, Q, X, Z, or an awkward pair — cannot hide inside as many words as E or S. Build out from those. Common letters will connect almost anything, which makes them bad starting points on a crowded board.
Four-letter words are legal, and they are often the key that unlocks a crossing. Leaving them “for later” because they feel small is how a region of the board stays frozen. If a corner has not changed after two finds, there is probably a short word inside it.
A wrong drag you back out of is cheap. A wrong assumption you keep is not. Follow a path, and if the letters stop being a word, lift your finger and try the neighbour you skipped. Typing helps once you have a candidate and do not want to trace every bridge by hand. It does not help if you have not looked at which letters are actually connected.
Where it sits
Zanagrams is the quiet daily on the site. It suits people who like anagrams but want the space of the board to do some of the work. Word Snake is the cousin that gives you a skeleton of the word and asks you to draw the path. 9 Words is the same love of letters with a clock attached.
When the sixteen-letter board starts to feel short, Zanagrams Master is the same idea on twenty-five letters: more bridges, a thicker knot, and the same rule that finished paths fall away.