Walkthroughs

Word Connect tips and tricks - how to improve your word-finding skills

Sometimes it's just guessing

Word Connect tips and tricks - how to improve your word-finding skills
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Word Connect is a swipe-based word find puzzler by Zenjoy. In each level, players are tasked with finding specific sets of words based on the letters you're given and the length of each goal word. As you progress through the stages, the words become longer and more challenging to uncover.

Our tips below offer a few strategies for finding words, reaching those later stages, and achieving vocabulary victory. If you're stuck on a tough early level and would like the words directly, they may be available in our selected answers guide.

Watch the order

Our favorite feature of Word Connect that helps in hunting down hard-to-find words is the fact that the goal words are listed in alphabetical order by length. You can use the placement of the remaining missing words on the list up top to narrow down what letters it could start with.

So, let's say you need to find four different three-letter words with "a, c, r, t" and you have already found "art" and "cat." If, on the word list at the top, the remaining missing words come after "cat," you know that they do not begin with "a" or "ca." If one word was "car," for instance, there would be a missing word before "cat" because it comes first alphabetically.

In the image above, we need to find one more three-letter word. Since it's listed first and above "new," we know it comes before "new" alphabetically. So it can't start with "t" or "w," which helps narrow down our options and leads us to "net."

Remember that this only applies to words of the same length: the blanks are always listed in order of length and then in alphabetical order, so if you need to find a two-letter, three-letter, and four-letter word, they will not necessarily be in order relative to each other.

Keep an eye up top

Besides using the alphabetical listing to help narrow down your remaining words, use the words you've already found as inspiration for other potential creations. It's easy to focus entirely on the letters at the bottom of the screen, but take a break and look up regularly.

Often longer words will contain elements of shorter ones you've already found, like "heap" and "cheap." Sometimes reading the words you've found out loud—and slowly sounding out their consonants—can nudge you in the right direction.

Similarly, even if you don't need to find a certain length of word—e.g. there are no two- or three-letter goal words—try making some anyway. They won't work as answers or bonus words, but they can often remind you of another word that might be included. We often do this with common groups of letters, like "ing" or "er."

Rearrange to your heart's content

There are two buttons at the bottom of the board that can help in a pinch: on the left side, hints can be purchased for 120 coins a piece and they will fill in one letter on a missing word for each hint used. On the right side is the "rearrange" button which rotates the letters you're swiping into a new configuration.

"Rearrange" is not only free, but it can be extremely helpful. Sometimes a set of words seems completely impenetrable, but after rearranging you might find an entire word is spelled out in the new organization. You can rearrange the same set of words as many times as you like, and we recommend doing so often: even if a new word doesn't appear, just getting an alternate view of the letters might help get the brain juices flowing.

Aim for bonus words first

Words you find that aren't specifically the goals of the level are added to your bonus "prize" box. After you find enough bonus words in total, you get to collect extra coins from the box.

Although you can replay past levels, you cannot go back and collect their bonus words. Additionally, as soon as you find the last word on a level, you'll automatically move on to the next stage. In order to keep filling the prize box and earning extra coins, you should try to find all the bonus words possible before completing the goal words.

One tip for doing this is to simply do the opposite of our advice above: look at the order of your missing words and then try out words that don't fit in the alphabetical listing. If your last word comes after "cat" alphabetically, try making words that come before instead.

You can check on the status of your bonus word finds by tapping on the prize box at the top of the screen and then the red note icon on the right side of the box. This shows you every bonus word you've found on the current stage so far. It will also note if there are no bonus words for the current stage—it will say "No bonus words in this level!"—or if you've found all the bonus words available—there will be a red stamp with "All found!" In either of these cases, you can freely focus on the goal words instead.

Word Connect usually chooses the more obvious or common words for most levels. So, for example, on a stage with "i, l, o, n" the word "lion" is a goal word and "loin" is a bonus word. Words like "not" and "hot" are more commonly used as goals over words like "mot" or "tom." Keep this in mind when searching for bonuses: if you need one more word to finish the stage and you could make either "old" or "oud," the goal word is almost certainly "old" and you should input it last.

Solving strategies

When you're stuck on a tough level, just keep trying words. There is no time limit or penalty for wrong—or even non—words, so just keep swiping across the letters. You might happen upon some random bonus words or create a string of letters that reminds you of an actual word.

Use a systematic approach if you're down to guessing: pick one letter as the first letter and then work through every possible combination for the length you're trying to solve.

So, let's say you have "a, c, f, e" and you're trying to find a three-letter word. If you started with "a," make "acf," "ace," "afc," "afe," "aec," "aef" in roughly that order. You're essentially crossing options off the list of potential words in an order that helps you remember what you've already tried. After you've tried all those combinations, you know you're safe to move on to the next letter as the starter, so "caf," "cae," and so on.

Save your coins for higher level stages and don't use them on the daily puzzle. The daily puzzle doesn't require you to find a specific set of words: you only need to find enough words at the given lengths to accumulate the required amount of points.

So, if you need 100 points to pass and three-letter words give you 20 points and four-letter words give you 50, you could pass with five three-letter words or two four-letter words (or a combination of the two). Random guessing on the daily puzzle will result in success more often than on the standard stages, so hints aren't quite as useful.

Jillian Werner
Jillian Werner
When not hunting down food in buffet- or waffle-form, Jillian loves to play puzzle, adventure, and cat games. Yes, she insists "cat" is a legitimate genre.