The campaign

The Daily is one puzzle a day. The campaign is for everything else: a long, unhurried journey of themed word searches you play at your own pace.

• 100chapters
• 20puzzles in each
• 1 bossat the end of every chapter
• No fail stateplay for stars

The chapter map

The Play tab is a tall illustrated map with a winding path. Each chapter is a landmark along it, named after the scene its picture shows: The Meadow, The Kitchen, Out at Sea, Among the Stars, A Rainy Day, The Garden, The Café, The Orchard, Harvest Time and The Party. The otter stands on your current chapter. Chapters farther along stay under fog until you reach them: finish a chapter to open the next.

Tap a landmark to open its chapter: the picture so far, twenty little pips for its puzzles, and a Play button. Each puzzle inside a chapter has its own word theme, like Breakfast or Birds.

A picture that fills in

Every puzzle you finish reveals another slice of the chapter's picture. Finish all twenty and the full illustration is yours: it hangs in the Gallery on the You tab, and you can send it to someone as a postcard.

Choose how hard it feels

You pick the difficulty from the chapter screen: Relax, Normal or Hard.

• Normal starts on Easy 8×8 grids, moves to Medium 10×10 from chapter 3, and to Hard 12×12 from chapter 6.
• Relax plays one step easier than Normal at every point.
• Hard plays one step harder.

Spellhunt may suggest a change, but it never makes one for you. If you leave two puzzles in a row unfinished, or lean on three or more hints a puzzle, it offers Relax. If you solve five in a row with no hints and in under 45 seconds, it asks if you'd like to try Hard. It asks at most once per session, and "I'm good" is always an answer. Slow solving on its own never triggers an offer: taking your time is not struggling.

Puzzle modes along the way

Chapter 1 is all classic straight-line puzzles. From chapter 2, each chapter mixes in a few twists: three Zigzag puzzles, where words bend, and two Gaps puzzles, where each word on the list is missing a letter. Mirror puzzles, with every word backwards, join from chapter 8, and Hidden puzzles, with no word list at all, from chapter 12. Two twists never come back to back in the early chapters. The puzzle modes guide explains each one.

Boss puzzles

Puzzle 20 of every chapter is the boss: a 14×14 grid with 15 words, and no word list. Instead you see blanks for each word's letters and the category, like five blanks and "Kitchen". You work out what you're looking for from the length and the theme. A First letter hint puts the first letter on the blanks.

There's no way to lose a boss. Take as long as you like. When you finish, you get stars:

You can replay any boss to improve its stars. Three stars on a chapter's boss unlocks that chapter's own grid paper, a cosmetic you can use on every puzzle.

Golden tiles

Now and then a campaign grid has a golden tile, with a soft shimmer. Find a word that runs through it and that word counts double. About one campaign puzzle in twenty has one. More in the hints and extras guide.

When you're stuck

If a minute and a half goes by without a find in a campaign puzzle, the otter may point at a letter that belongs to a word you haven't found: "Psst, try around here." It's free and it isn't a hint. You can also rotate the grid, which is always free, or use a hint.

What the campaign earns

Each campaign puzzle earns coins and XP, and counts toward your league if you're in one: up to 10 campaign puzzles a day, including one boss. Boss stars pay coins and XP too. The rules and scoring guide has the numbers.

Keep your place

Sign in with Apple and your chapter progress, stars and pictures sync to your account, so a new phone or an iPad carries on from the same landmark.

Updated September 30, 2026.