What Is Wend? A Guide to the Word-Path Puzzle

Wend is a grid-based word puzzle: every board hides a handful of words among its letter tiles, and your job is to trace a path through adjacent letters to spell each one. Solve the puzzle by using every letter tile exactly once, across all the hidden words combined.

How Wend Works

• Drag from one letter tile to an adjacent one - up, down, left, or right. Diagonal moves aren't allowed.
• You can't revisit a letter within the same word, but a tile you've already used for one word can't be reused for another either - each tile belongs to exactly one word.
• Gray wall tiles block the path entirely. Your route has to bend around them.
• The puzzle is solved when every non-wall tile has been claimed by one of the hidden words.

How Wend Differs From a Standard Word Search

In a classic word search, words can overlap, share letters, and go in eight directions including diagonals - and there's usually a sea of unused letters padding the grid. Wend removes the padding: every single tile is part of exactly one word, and only orthogonal (non-diagonal) moves are allowed. That constraint is what makes Wend feel more like a logic puzzle than a search-and-scan exercise - you're reconstructing a tiling of the grid, not just spotting words in a haystack.

Strategy Tips

• Start with the shortest word in the list - it has the fewest possible paths, so it's the fastest to pin down.
• Look at corner and edge tiles first. A tile with only one or two open neighbors (because of walls or the grid edge) severely limits which word it can belong to.
• If two words share a possible starting letter, trace the less ambiguous one first to lock in tiles and reduce the other word's options.
• When you get stuck, check whether the remaining unclaimed tiles form a shape that only fits one of the remaining words - the tiling constraint often solves the last word for you.

Wend has four difficulty levels, from 5x5 grids with common words up to 7x7 grids using some of the rarest words in the dictionary, plus a new daily puzzle every day.