Rules and scoring
Find every word on the list and the puzzle is done. The details below are for when you want to know exactly how the numbers work.
Grid sizes and directions
Every puzzle is a square grid with a list of words hidden in straight lines. How big the grid is, how many words it hides and which ways they can run depends on the difficulty.
| Difficulty | Grid | Words | Directions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 8×8 | 6 | 4: left to right, straight down, and the two diagonals running downward. Never backwards |
| Medium | 10×10 | 9 | All 8, backwards and diagonals included |
| Hard | 12×12 | 12 | All 8 |
| Boss | 14×14 | 15, shown only as blanks and a category | All 8 |
| Expert grid | 13×13 | 12 | Every word backwards |
The Daily is always Medium. In the campaign you choose Relax, Normal or Hard, and the grid grows as the chapters go on. The Expert grid is an option on Hard that opens at level 20.
What makes a fair grid
Every puzzle is built by the same generator, which follows a few rules so a grid feels fair:
- Listed words are common words. A Fruits puzzle won't ask you to find a fruit only a botanist knows.
- No listed word sits inside another listed word, so you never find CAT while hunting for CATTLE.
- Two listed words share at most two letters of the grid.
- The filler letters between the words are chosen so they don't accidentally spell a real word of five letters or more.
- On Medium and harder grids, words run in at least five of the eight directions, so no single direction does all the work.
How your score works
Your score appears when you finish a puzzle, broken into lines so you can see where it came from:
- Words: 100 points for each word on the list.
- Time bonus: each puzzle has a par time of 12 seconds per word. Finish under par and you earn 25 points for every second you saved.
- No hints: 100 points if you didn't use a hint.
- Bonus word: 500 points for finding the Daily's hidden bonus word.
- Extra words: 50 points for each extra word you find in the Daily's bonus round.
- Golden tiles: a word that runs through a golden tile counts double, so it adds another 100.
A worked example. A Daily has 9 words, so par is 9 × 12 = 108 seconds. Say you finish in 1:30 without a hint. That's 900 for the words, 18 seconds under par × 25 = 450 time bonus, and 100 for no hints: 1,450. Find the bonus word afterward and it's 1,950.
Score feeds your weekly league points. It never decides your Daily rank.
How the Daily is ranked
Daily rankings go by time alone. The clock starts on your first touch of the grid, not when the puzzle appears, so reading the word list first is free. It stops the moment you find the last listed word. If two players finish in the same time, the one who used fewer hints ranks higher, then the one with fewer wrong swipes.
After the clock stops you get up to 60 untimed seconds to hunt for the bonus word and extra words. Those add to your score but can never change your time. More in the Daily guide.
Coins
Coins are Spellhunt's one currency. You spend them on hints, streak repairs and cosmetics. You earn them by playing:
| What you do | Coins |
|---|---|
| Finish the Daily | 30 |
| Finish a campaign puzzle | 20 |
| Finish without a hint | 10 more |
| Find an extra word | 5 each, up to 3 per puzzle |
| Today's three goals | 15, 15 and 30 |
| A boss puzzle's stars | 20, 40 or 60 for one, two or three stars |
| Promotion to a higher league tier | 150 |
Puzzle payouts slow down on a long day: after your fifth puzzle of the day they pay half, and after your tenth a quarter. That keeps coins meaningful for everyone, and it means a few puzzles a day earn close to what a marathon does.
XP and levels
Experience points (XP) measure how much you've played, and they only go up. You get 10 XP for a campaign puzzle, 25 for the Daily, 10 for each new boss star and 2 for each extra word. Levels run to 50. Every fifth level gives you a new title, from Word Spotter to Wordsmith, and every tenth gives you a cosmetic. Level 20 opens the Expert grid.
Updated September 30, 2026.