Strands turns a plain letter grid into a small daily obsession. You are not just finding words, you are hunting for the one long word that ties the whole board to a secret theme, and that hunt is what keeps people opening the app every morning. We wanted that same feeling available without an account or an app download, so we built Word Threads, an original word-finding game that runs right here on this page. Same core idea, its own puzzles, free, no signup required.
Play Word Threads now
Drag across adjacent letters to spell a word, or tap each letter in order and tap the last one again to lock it in.
How to play
Every puzzle hides a set of theme words inside a 6 by 8 letter grid, plus one longer word called the spangram that always touches two opposite sides of the board. Trace a word by dragging across connected letters, including diagonals, or by tapping each letter and tapping the final one again to submit. A correct word locks in place with a highlight and stays on the board. Find the spangram and the secret theme behind that day’s puzzle gets revealed right there on the page.
You get one hint mechanic worth knowing: find three words of four or more letters that are not part of the answer key, and you earn a hint that outlines an unsolved theme word for you to trace. Two tabs sit above the board. Daily gives everyone the same puzzle until midnight, and Practice deals a fresh grid every time you tap it, with no limit on rounds.
Your streak, your solved count, and today’s progress are all saved on your device. Nothing leaves your browser.
How it compares to Strands
Word Threads keeps the mechanic that makes Strands worth opening daily: a full grid of letters with no wasted space, a set of hidden theme words, one spangram that spans the board and unlocks the day’s secret category, and a hint system that rewards you for testing words the puzzle was not actually looking for. We even use the same construction trick the original relies on: every letter in our grid belongs to exactly one answer word, so nothing is left over once you solve it.
What we do not have is the New York Times’ daily editorial team writing a fresh, cleverly themed puzzle every single day forever. Our puzzle pool rotates through a set of original themes we built ourselves, so the daily grid you see today will repeat eventually, just with a different letter layout each time thanks to how the grid gets built. We also skip accounts, archives of past puzzles, and any cross-device sync, since everything here lives in your browser’s local storage rather than a server.
If you want a puzzle written fresh by professionals every morning with zero repeats, the official Strands is worth keeping around for that. Ours is a free companion for whenever you want another round, or want to try the mechanic before deciding whether the real thing is worth your time. The official app also bundles Wordle, Connections, the Crossword, and Spelling Bee under one subscription for readers who want the full puzzle lineup.
Get the official game
Strands lives inside NYT Games, the same New York Times app that carries Wordle, Connections, the Crossword, and Spelling Bee. The daily puzzle is free to play with an account, and a Games subscription unlocks the archive and the rest of the lineup. We also built a Connections web alternative if you want another sibling puzzle from the same publisher to play here.
Frequently asked questions
Can I play Strands in a browser?
The official Strands runs on the NYT Games site and in the NYT Games app, both of which work in a mobile or desktop browser with an account. Word Threads, the game on this page, needs neither an account nor a visit to another site. It loads directly here and is playable in seconds.
Is this the real Strands?
No. Word Threads is an original game we built, inspired by the trace-a-hidden-word-to-reveal-a-theme format that made Strands popular. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to The New York Times in any way. The grid, the theme list, and the code are entirely our own, and the download links above point to the official NYT Games app.
Is the daily puzzle the same as the official Strands?
No. Word Threads builds its daily puzzle from its own theme list and its own date-based seed, so it never matches the NYT answer key. Everyone who opens this page on a given day gets the same theme and the same set of words, which keeps results comparable if you want to compare progress with someone else playing here. Treat the two dailies as separate puzzles.
Does it work offline?
Once the page finishes loading, the game makes no further network requests, so a dropped connection will not interrupt a round, and your streak stays saved on your device. For the official puzzle without any connection at all, the NYT Games app is the better fit since it can download a day’s puzzle in advance.
Is it free?
Completely. No ads, no purchases, no accounts, and nothing tracked. The official daily Strands is also free on the NYT site and app, with a Games subscription needed only for the archive and the rest of the puzzle lineup.
