Threadle
Threadle is a word puzzle with no spare squares: every letter on the board belongs to some word, and every word winds through the grid like a snake. Find where each one starts and ends, and trace it.
The board is not a soup of letters with words hidden in it — it is words all the way down. Each one snakes through the grid, turning wherever it likes, and together they cover every single cell exactly once. That changes how you read it: a letter you cannot place is not filler, it is a piece of a word you have not found yet.
Only the ends are marked. Two dots of the same colour are the head and tail of one word, and your job is to work out the path between them — how many turns it takes, which letters it swallows on the way. Draw it right and the snake fills in behind your finger.
The help fades as you go. Early boards colour every pair of ends and show the words below; later the colours drop away, then the words shorten to their first and last letters, then to a single letter, and finally to nothing at all. By then you are reading the grid itself.
Three thousand levels climb from a four-by-four square with three short words to a nine-by-ten grid packed with a dozen, and the dictionary is nouns only — no articles, no verb forms, no abbreviations, so a word you cannot see is still a word you know.
Two daily modes sit beside the campaign: a five-level themed survival run on one subject with three lives for the whole run, and a single streak level that keeps a counter going as long as you come back.
How to play Threadle
One gesture, and everything else is reading the board:
- Find two dots of the same colour — they are the two ends of one word.
- Press one end and drag through the letters, turning wherever the word turns.
- Release on the other end. If the path spells the word, the snake lights up.
- Every cell belongs to exactly one word, so a full board is a solved board.
- Finish without a wrong guess for three stars.
Game modes
| Mode | What changes | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Adventure | Three thousand levels with a difficulty curve — boards grow, hints fade. | The main campaign, a level at a sitting. |
| Daily Themed Survival | Five harder boards on one theme, three lives for the whole run, no word repeated. | A single sharper run each day. |
| Daily Streak | One level a day near your current progress; miss a day and the streak resets. | A reason to come back. |
Tips for Threadle
- Count the cells between two ends — that is exactly how many letters the word has.
- Start with the shortest pair on the board; it fixes cells the longer words then have to route around.
- A letter with only one free neighbour left has to belong to the word passing through it.
- When the colours are gone, the word list below is still ordered by length.
- Corners are cheap places to start: a path entering one has only one way out.
Who made Threadle?
Threadle was built for crokocat in 2026 — a word puzzle where the grid is a perfect partition into words, generated fresh for every one of its three thousand levels.
Guides & tips
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About this game
- Controls
- Drag from one coloured dot to another, following the letters in between. The path you draw has to spell a word and land exactly on the matching end.
- Supported devices
- desktop, phone, tablet
- Developer
- crokocat
- Genre
- Puzzle
- Release date
- August 2026
- Latest update
- August 2026
Related categories
Frequently asked questions
Is Threadle free to play?
Yes. It runs in your browser on crokocat with no download and no sign-up, on desktop, phone or tablet.
How is this different from a word search?
A word search hides words among random letters and the words are straight lines. Here every letter belongs to a word, the words bend and turn, and the board is only solved when all of them are traced.
How do I know where a word starts?
Both ends are marked with dots. Early on the two ends of one word share a colour; later the colours go away and you work it out from the letters.
What words are used?
Common nouns only — no articles, verb forms, plurals, abbreviations or proper names.
Is my progress saved?
Yes. Your level and stars are stored in your browser, and if you are signed in to crokocat they follow you to another device.