Scanning techniques

How you move your eyes over a grid matters more than how hard you look. These are the methods good solvers switch between, and when each one works best.

Anchor on the rarest letter

Every word has a letter that's rarer than the others. In JOURNEY it's the J; in BISCOTTI it's the double T; in SQUATS it's the Q. Pick that letter and look only for it. Rare letters appear a handful of times at most, so you'll check each one quickly.

At each match, look at its eight neighbors for the letter that comes before or after it in the word. If it's there, follow the line. If not, move to the next match. This works because checking one letter is much faster than recognizing a whole word, and it works the same in every direction.

Look for the Zs first. Two touching Zs can only be PIZZA's, and the diagonal gives away the rest.

Hunt letter pairs

When a word has no rare letter, look for a distinctive pair instead: a double letter (the EE in BREEZE, the LL in BALLAD), or a pair that doesn't come up often, like KN, WR, PH or CK. A pair is more specific than a single letter and still fast to spot, because the two letters sit side by side in one of eight directions.

Word endings help too. Many words end in ING, ER, ED or S, but so do many bits of filler, so endings are better for confirming a word than for finding it.

Sweep in lines

For a word you just can't place, go systematic. Run your eyes along each row from left to right, looking only for the word's first letter, then do the same for each column. It's slower than anchoring, but it doesn't miss anything, and it's the best way to finish the last word of a puzzle.

Keep your place as you go. On a phone, resting a thumb at the edge of the row you're on helps. On an iPad held sideways, the bigger grid makes the rows easier to follow.

Check around a letter in a fixed order

When you're at a candidate letter, check its neighbors in the same order every time, like the hours on a clock: up, up-right, right, down-right, down, down-left, left, up-left. A fixed order means you never skip a direction, and the backwards and diagonal ones get the same attention as left to right.

Let the words find you

Sometimes the fastest method is not to search at all. Relax your focus, look at the whole grid, and let a familiar shape catch your eye. Your brain is very good at noticing words it already knows. This works best right after you've read the list, and on long words. When something jumps out, take it, even if it isn't the word you were looking for.

Switch methods on purpose

Each technique has a blind spot. Anchoring fails when a word's letters are all common. Sweeping is thorough but slow. Soft focus finds long words and misses short ones. If one method hasn't worked in fifteen seconds or so, switch to another rather than repeating it. In Spellhunt, rotating the grid is a quick way to reset your eyes.

Practicing

Blitz is good practice for anchoring and soft focus: sixty seconds, a big grid and no pressure to finish. For careful sweeping, try a boss puzzle in the campaign, where the list shows only blanks and a category.

Updated September 30, 2026.