If you play our Smartle daily word puzzle regularly you are probably much faster at finding words than first-time players. That is because you already notice patterns that one-time players often miss. The more often and more regularly you play daily word games, the faster it becomes less about luck and stumbling on words by chance, and more about letters and patterns.
After spending a lot of time building word puzzles and playing them daily, we have collected a few insights that can help both beginners and experienced players improve their performance.
One of the most important learnings is this: consistency matters more than luck. Playing a daily word game every day builds intuition. You begin to “feel” which letters are likely to work together.
Start easy
Knowing a few strong five-letter words can give you a quick start in word puzzle games. We find it the best way to begin a round and quickly have some words done.
Here are our favourite starting words: table, stare, crane, slate, trace, arise, other, which, there. We do not really know how it works, but somehow, in almost any game we are able to find one of these words. Maybe they just have very frequent letters in them.
What we also do when starting any word puzzle—but especially in Sprint mode, where we have to be quick—is look for patterns that appear in a lot of words. For example:
- TH → think, there, bath, three, truth
- CH → reach, check, watch, couch
- SH → share, crush, fresh
- ING → bring, fling, thing
- ED → tried, saved, aimed, fixed
Once you start spotting these patterns, words tend to come to mind more naturally.
When you have plenty of S tiles
Our all-time favourite insight: it is a great help when you have dealt a lot of letters “S”. That is because you can often turn a four-letter word into a five-letter word just by making it plural—for example: BOOK → BOOKS, HAND → HANDS, and so on. This trick opens up many more options and is super easy.
Why word puzzle games are sometimes hard even for native speakers
Even native speakers struggle with daily word games sometimes. The main reason is that these games often accept words that are correct but not commonly used in everyday language. These words are not outdated or “bad” in any way. They are valid words, but many players do not actively use them in conversation, so they are not the ones they would try first.
Smartle is not the exception. We want players to learn new words and extend their vocabulary. Because of this we added word definitions to the game several months ago. If you accidentally create a word you do not know and Smartle accepts it, you can click the “Found words archive” button and see definitions for that word and all the other words found during the game. The same goes for hints: sometimes a hint surfaces a word that is new to you—in that case, go ahead and read the definition. It is always one click away.
Final thoughts
The more you play free word games, the more patterns you start to see. What once felt random becomes predictable. The key is to stay consistent, learn from mistakes, and gradually build a mental library of useful words and patterns.
In the end, daily word puzzles are not just about finding the right answer. In Smartle there are multiple correct ways to win a daily word puzzle or Sprint. It is all about training yourself to think in a structured and efficient way—which in the end makes your brain younger and improves your cognitive abilities overall.