Word search, but somebody is racing you
How to play Word Chaser with a friend
- Open Word ChaserPick it from the Games tab.
- Pick your opponent and modeBattle Live for a friend who's free now; Battle Anytime to leave a score for them to chase.
- Read the themeEvery grid has a theme — the words you're hunting all belong to it, which narrows your search before you've looked at a single letter.
- Drag to claim a wordTouch the first letter and drag through to the last. Lift to lock it in.
- Beat their countFind more of the list than your rival before the clock runs out.
The three tiers change the puzzle, not just the timer
Most puzzle apps make a word search harder by shrinking the clock. Word Chaser changes the geometry instead, which changes how you have to look.
Easy runs words forward and down only. Your eye can scan in two directions and never has to check anything else — a relaxed left-to-right sweep gets you most of the list.
Medium adds reversals. Now a word can run backwards or upwards, so a scan that only reads one way misses half the grid. This is the default for every Battle Anytime puzzle.
Hard opens all eight directions, diagonals included. Diagonals are the ones people miss, because reading a diagonal is not something eyes do naturally — you have to hunt letter pairs instead of scanning lines.
Why racing changes how you search
Alone, the optimal strategy for a word search is a methodical sweep: cover the grid systematically, never look at the same region twice, finish everything.
Against a clock and another person, that's wrong. Words are worth the same whether they were easy or hard to spot, so the winning play is to take everything cheap first and only start hunting the awkward diagonals once the obvious ones are gone.
It's the same shift that happens in any timed exam: completeness stops being the goal and rate becomes the goal.
The theme is a search filter, and most people ignore it
Every grid's word list shares a theme. That's not decoration — it tells you what letter patterns to expect before you start.
If the theme is countries, you're looking for capital-heavy strings and unusual letter pairs. If it's kitchen items, you're looking for short common words. Priming yourself on the theme for three seconds is worth more than three seconds of scanning.
Three things that actually help
- Hunt rare letters first. Q, Z, X and J appear in very few grid positions, so a word containing one is usually the fastest to locate.
- On hard grids, scan for two-letter diagonal pairs rather than trying to read whole diagonal lines. Your eye can do pairs.
- Grab every short word before you chase a long one. Length doesn't score more here — count does.
Word Chaser questions
Can you play a word search with two players?+
Yes. Word Chaser puts both players on the same grid with the same themed list and the same clock. You hunt independently and whoever finds more words wins, so it plays as a race rather than a shared board.
What's the difference between the easy, medium and hard grids?+
Direction. Easy hides words forward and down only. Medium adds reversed and upward words. Hard uses all eight directions including diagonals, which are the hardest for the eye to catch.
Does finding a longer word score more?+
No. In Word Chaser every word on the list counts the same, so the fastest route to a win is taking the easy finds first rather than hunting the impressive ones.