Squares Word Game FAQ

Squares is a daily word game played on a 4×4 grid of letters. You trace a path through touching squares — horizontally, vertically, or diagonally — to spell words of four letters or more, without reusing a square in the same word. Every puzzle hides a fixed list of common words; finding them all completes the puzzle. It is a "connect the letters" word hunt, related to games like Boggle and Squaredle.

Yes. squaresgame.app is completely free and runs entirely in your browser. There is nothing to buy, download, or install, and there are no interruptive video ads, premium tiers, or paywalls. Open the page and today’s puzzle is ready.

Yes. A fresh daily puzzle is generated for every calendar day and is the same for every player. Your progress on the day’s puzzle is saved locally, so you can stop and pick it up later. If you want to keep playing, practice puzzles are unlimited and generate a brand-new grid each time.

No. The game is the website — a 100% browser-based build with no app store download and no sign-up. Your streak and stats are saved locally in your browser, so there is no login to manage.

Grid letter games trace back to Word Cubes in the early 1970s and Parker Brothers’ Boggle in 1972, where players shake a tray of lettered dice and race to list connected words. The daily, share-your-result format was popularised by the wave of browser word games in the 2020s. Squares combines the connected-letter grid with a fixed daily target list.

Yes. Squares is family-friendly with no chat, no ads between puzzles, and a dictionary that excludes offensive terms. The four-letter minimum and length hints make it a reasonable vocabulary and spelling exercise, and practice puzzles give unlimited fresh grids.

Start on any letter and drag, tap, or type your way through connected squares to build a word. Each square touches the next, diagonals included, and no square repeats within one word. Submit by lifting your finger, pressing Enter, or clicking the last letter again. Valid target words score one point per letter. Keep going until the word list shows every word found.

Four letters. Three-letter words and shorter do not count, whether they are on the target list or not. Longer words are worth more because each target word scores one point per letter.

Yes. A square connects to all eight squares around it, including the four diagonals. Many words in a Squares grid only exist along a diagonal or zig-zag path, so it pays to look in every direction from each letter.

Bonus words are valid English words that appear in the grid but are not on the puzzle’s target list — usually rare, archaic, slang, or highly technical terms. Finding one is recorded as a bonus find and adds to your total words, but it does not score points and is not required to complete the puzzle.

Every target word scores one point per letter: a four-letter word is 4 points, a six-letter word is 6, and so on. Your score climbs toward the puzzle’s maximum as you find words. Bonus words score nothing. Time is tracked separately so you can chase a fast completion.

Common reasons: it is under four letters, the path reused a square, the letters were not actually connected, or the word is not in the game’s dictionary (which excludes proper nouns, hyphenated words, and abbreviations). If a valid-looking word is refused, check that every letter touches the next and that no square is used twice.

Swipe or drag across touching letters and lift to submit; or tap letters one at a time and tap the last one again to submit; or, on a desktop, type the word and the path follows. Backspace or dragging back removes the last letter, Escape or an off-grid tap clears, Enter submits. Hint, mute, and new practice puzzle are buttons in the HUD.

It shares the core idea — connect adjacent letters to make words — with Boggle, Squaredle, and similar grid word hunts. The differences here: a fixed target list you are trying to clear rather than an open free-for-all, one point per letter, a bonus-word list for rarer finds, three hints, and a new deterministic puzzle every day with unlimited practice.

Often, yes — a word may have several valid paths through the grid. Any one of them counts. Once a word is on your found list, tracing it again by a different route just tells you it is already found.

Read the length hints in the word list, then work the grid deliberately: start a trace from every square in turn, test prefixes (RE-, UN-, DE-) and suffixes (-S, -ED, -ING, -ER), and look for zig-zag and diagonal paths you skipped. If you are still stuck, spend one of your three hints to light up the start of an unfound word.

Three per puzzle. A hint highlights the first square of an unfound target word and the next square along its path, showing you where a word begins and which way it heads without revealing the whole word. Hints do not regenerate within a puzzle, so save them for the hard finds.

Completing the daily puzzle — finding every target word — extends your streak by one. Miss a day and the streak resets to zero the next time you complete a daily. Practice puzzles never affect the streak. Your longest streak is kept separately as a personal best.

Scan for the longest words first: look at each square and ask what six- or seven-letter word could start there. Long words use more of the grid and often reveal the shorter words nested inside them. Then sweep for four- and five-letter words square by square.

They do not score and are not needed to finish, but they add to your lifetime "total words found" stat and are satisfying to collect. Chasing them is optional flavour, not a requirement.

Your progress on today’s puzzle, your current and longest streak, puzzles completed, best completion time, and total words found are all saved locally in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server and there is no account. Because the save lives on the device, a different phone, a new browser profile, or cleared site data looks like a fresh start.

Yes. The layout is built for touch: swipe across the letters to trace a word and lift to submit. The grid, word list, and controls fit on one portrait screen, and starting a practice puzzle is instant with no page reload.

The game needs a connection to load the page the first time. After that, some browsers may keep the tab playable without a network, but there is no dedicated offline app or installer. The daily puzzle is generated in your browser, not fetched, so it works as long as the page is loaded.

Open Stats from the game’s HUD and use Reset progress, then confirm. That clears your streaks, puzzles completed, best time, total words, and saved daily progress on this browser. It cannot be undone. Your mute preference is kept.

Any current browser with JavaScript: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari on desktop, plus their mobile versions. If letters do not respond to a swipe, update the browser, allow scripts for this site, and reload.