How to play Sletters, the snake word puzzle

The puzzle behind Sletters: Word path puzzle

Word path puzzles hand you a grid of letters and ask you to trace words through letters that touch. The family is old and broad: letter grids drawn on paper, word searches that hide words in straight lines, and letter cube games that score every word you can find. A stricter branch asks you to use every letter exactly once, so the whole grid splits neatly into words.

Also known as word snake, letter path puzzle.

Sletters is an original game from Daily New Game, in that stricter branch. Every word you spell becomes one of Noodle's snakes, so its letters are gone for good, and the goal is to eat the whole board in as few words as possible. Words move only up, down, left or right, rocks block the way on bigger boards, and every board ships with a checked way to reach the target.

How to play Sletters

Noodle the snake is hungry. Spell words to eat every letter.

• Slide through letters that sit side by side (up, down, left or right) to spell a word of three letters or more.
• Each word becomes a snake that stays on the board, so those letters are gone for good.
• Eat every letter in the target number of snakes, or fewer, for three stars. Every letter in more snakes earns two.
• A letter with a dashed red outline and a "!" can no longer be part of any word. Undo to rescue it.
• Stuck with a few stranded letters? Finish to bank one star when at most two letters are left or you ate four snakes.
• A hint or two caps the board at two stars, and lots of hints at one.

What you can never do

• Slide diagonally: only up, down, left or right.
• Use a letter twice: once eaten, it is gone.

Controls with Noodle the snake

• Drag across letters and let go to eat the word, or tap letters one by one and press Eat.
• With a keyboard, Tab to the board, use the arrow keys to move, Space to add a letter, Enter to eat, Backspace to take a letter back and Escape to clear.
• Undo takes back your last snake. Ctrl and Z does the same.

Strategies for beginners

Work out the word length you need

Count the letters and divide by the target. Sixteen letters with a target of four snakes means words of about four letters each. If your first words are short, a later one has to be long, so look for that long word early.

Read the board in every direction

A word can start on any letter and run left, right, up or down, and it can turn as often as it likes. CAKE can read right to left, and LAMP can bend round a corner. Trace slowly from each letter before you decide there is nothing there.

Plan the awkward letters first

Rare letters such as J, Q, X and Z fit into few words, and a letter in a corner or beside a rock has few neighbours. Find a word for them while their neighbours are still free. The easy letters in the middle can join almost anything later.

Never wall off one or two letters

Before you eat a word, look at what it leaves behind. A group of one or two letters cut off from the rest can never make a three letter word, so it will be stranded. A group of three must spell a word exactly, which is rarely possible.

Let endings mop up spare letters

Plurals and word endings are handy for stray letters. An S next to SNOW makes SNOWS, and ED, ER or ING can stretch a word into a corner. A longer word also means fewer snakes, which is exactly what the target asks for.

Undo freely, hint sparingly

Undo costs nothing: only the snakes on the board at the end count. A hint caps your stars, so try a few undos first. When the target is out of reach, the hint simply tells you how many snakes to undo, and that one does not count as a hint.

Quick tips from the game

• Start with letters in corners and next to rocks: they have the fewest neighbours.
• If the target looks out of reach, ask for a hint. It tells you how many snakes to undo.

Words to know

Snake

A word you have eaten. It stays on the board as a snake, and its letters can never be used again.

Target

The number of snakes a checked solution needs to eat every letter. Match it or beat it for three stars.

Stranded letter

A letter that can no longer be part of any word. It gets a dashed red outline and a "!".

Rock

A blocked square on bigger boards. Words cannot pass through it, so the letters around it are harder to reach.

Pass

Finishing a stuck board for one star, allowed when at most two letters are left or you have eaten enough snakes.

Board

One Sletters puzzle. The daily board and each of the 1,000 levels is a board.

Questions about Sletters