Games Like Letter Boxed: 7 Puzzles That Test the Same Skills

Letter Boxed is an odd one. You get twelve letters on a square, one rule that sounds easy and isn’t, and a target that is usually two words. If you like the moment when a long word suddenly threads the box, the puzzles below lean on the same muscles.

None of them is a clone. Letter Boxed is the only one where you chain words together and can’t play two consecutive letters from the same side, so the list is grouped by which part of it you enjoy.

If you like building words under a rule

Blossom

Blossom gives you one center letter and six petals, and every word must contain the center. The catch is that you only get twelve submissions, so choosing which words to play matters more than finding lots of them. Letter Boxed has no such cap, but the habit of choosing words deliberately carries over. Our Blossom hints cover the daily board.

Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee is the looser cousin: seven letters, a required center letter, words of four letters or more, and no limit on guesses. You can reuse letters inside a word, as in Letter Boxed, but nothing stops you from playing a hundred short words. Good for relaxed play. Spelling Bee hints.

If you like finding words in a letter layout

Strands

Strands is a themed word search where every letter belongs to exactly one answer. Letters connect in any direction and a word can bend as often as it needs to. Where Letter Boxed asks “what can I legally build?”, Strands asks “what is hiding in here?” Our Strands hints start with the theme.

Squaredle

Squaredle is a daily word search where you find words by tracing connected tiles, diagonals included. It comes in a standard daily puzzle and a smaller 3x3 Express version. Rules and membership details are at squaredle.app.

The rule is different from Letter Boxed, since you move between touching tiles rather than away from your own side, but the habit of scanning a small grid for long paths carries over.

If you like chains and using every letter

LinkedIn’s Crossclimb and Wend

LinkedIn runs a set of daily games, and two of them sit close to Letter Boxed’s ideas. Crossclimb is a word ladder: each word differs from the one before by a single letter, and getting the order right unlocks the clues for the top and bottom words. Wend has you connect letters to find hidden words, with every letter used exactly once. Both are listed on LinkedIn’s help page for its games. We don’t cover them, so there are no hint pages here.

Daily Jumble

Jumble is pure rearranging: unscramble a few words, then reshuffle the circled letters into a pun. It is the same “look at these letters differently” skill without any board geometry, and it has run in newspapers since 1954. Jumble answers.

A quick way to choose

You like the constraint: Blossom, for its twelve-word cap.
You like quiet, low-pressure word hunting: Spelling Bee or Squaredle.
You like the “everything must be used” feeling: Strands, or Wend on LinkedIn.
You like rearranging letters: Jumble.

Getting better at Letter Boxed

The puzzle is solved once all twelve letters have been touched. Because the second word starts on the last letter of the first, a two-word solution needs at least thirteen letters across both words to cover all twelve. That is why short words rarely finish a two-word solve.

Start with the awkward letters. Find where a J, Q, V or X can legally sit, build a word around it first, and the easy letters will fit around that word rather than the other way round. Remember that consecutive letters must come from different sides, so check each candidate word letter by letter before you commit to it.

If you are stuck on today’s box, our Letter Boxed hints nudge you toward the awkward letters before giving any words. And if you want to check candidate words from a pile of letters, the word unscrambler and anagram solver help.

Word Game Clues is an independent hint site and is not affiliated with The New York Times or any of the game publishers mentioned here.