Wordcels

How to Play

Chain words into consecutive, two-word phrases across a row, as the blue arrows indicate:

In columns where cells are connected vertically, also chain words into consecutive, two-word phrases going down.

Standard Mode

Standard mode is a little bit larger puzzle, and provides fewer clues than beginner mode.

You still chain words into two-word phrases going across.

stunt

double

feature

film

studio

take

part

And also going down
in connected columns.

What changes are the clues indicating progress. Green is still right words, right place. Yellow still means these words go together, just not where they are.

But now clues come in 3's or 5's.

Single words, or pairs, aren't colored to tell you if they are right or wrong.

stunt

film

studio

When you get 3 words in a row that are part of the solution they form a group that moves together.

A yellow group isn't in the right place yet.

stunt

feature

film

studio

A green group is in the right place.

stunt

feature

film

studio

A 4th word in a row with a green group won't be colored to indicate right or wrong.
But when 5 across are right, the whole row turns green.

stunt

double

feature

film

studio

A connected column turns dark green when all 3 words make two-word phrases going down.

Lastly, red x's between a pair of words indicate they are not a recognized two-word expression - people don't say shape part or ship moving very often.

Hard Mode

Hard mode is the same size puzzle as Standard mode, but there is no wordbank, and there are no clues.

You still chain words into two-word phrases going across.

stunt

double

feature

film

studio

take

part

And also going down
in connected columns.

Hard mode has no word bank and no clues.

The word bank is gone. The words start out on the game board in a random order.
There is no grouping. Even if three words in a row are part of the solution they don't group together and move as a block.
There are no color-coding clues. Nothing turns green or yellow until you solve it all.
Scoring is still based on the number of times a word on the game board is moved.
Scoring is handicapped - For each puzzle, the minimum possible number of moves (swaps) is computed. If you solve in that many moves, you can get a perfect score of zero.

Training Tutorial

The yellow background means cake is not in the right place.

A green background means a word is in the right place. Now make a two-word phrase ending in cake.

wedding cake - Good job. Now make a two word expression starting with cake.

A yellow background means walk isn't in the right place. But cake also needs to form an expression going down.

Great. Now find the second word that forms a two-word expression with cake.

Great. cake walk down and cake stand across. Now create a two-word expression ending in walk.

Finally, complete the word chain across the second row.

And solved! Every row has two-word expressions chained together across.

Drag cake one cell to the right.

Drag wedding to the top left cell.

Drag walk to the top right cell to create cake walk.

Drag walk below cake to create cake walk vertically.

Drag stand to the right of cake.

Drag jay into the lower left cell to make jay walk.

Drag away to the bottom right cell to make walk away.

The column where cells connect above or below, also has two-word expressions going down. You are ready to play.

Holiday puzzles are 9 words on a 3x3 game board. As usual, every word going horizontally must make a common two word expression with the word before and/or after it.

In holiday puzzles, all 3 columns must also make two word expressions going down.

In Beginner mode, each word placed will be green or yellow, so solutions come quickly. In Standard mode, one word is placed for you.

In Hard mode, no words are placed for you, and no progress indicators are provided - It all turns green when correct.

There are at least two solutions to a holiday puzzle. The words going across in one solution could be the words going down in the other solution, and vice-versa. Depending on the puzzle multiple bi-directional solutions may exist.

Saturday Special 🧚

Today's Sweet Tooth Fairy:

What is a Sweet Tooth Fairy?
It's a form of speech fitting a Wordcels-like pattern: the 1st and 2nd words form a known expression, and the 2nd and 3rd words do as well. And all three words together make a credible expression, often funny, or at least at the Dad-joke level.

The most famous sweet tooth fairy is from Charles Dickens: Individuals who excessively adhere to bureaucratic rules and formalities are "red tapeworms".

Saturdays are Special
Every Saturday, Wordcels has a sweet tooth fairy embedded in the puzzle in the cells outlined by red dashes. A description of the sweet tooth fairy is provided as a clue.

You Got It! 🧚

Back to Puzzle

Move Counts:

I'm just here to solve the puzzle
Show me my score, on every move.

Dark Mode

Coming soon

Playing Mode:

You are playing in beginner mode.

You select your playing difficulty at the start of each day's puzzle.
You are playing in standard mode.

You select your playing difficulty at the start of each day's puzzle.
You are playing in hard mode.

You select your playing difficulty at the start of each day's puzzle.
You can also learn about Puzzle Difficulty and the weekly cycle.

Standard mode Wordcels gets more difficult throughout the week. Monday is the easiest.

😁 Monday 3 answers provided
🙂 Tuesday 2 answers provided
🤔 Wednesday 1 answer provided
Thu, Fri, Sun 1 magic shamrock

In Standard mode and Hard mode, Saturdays have a clue in the form of a Sweet Tooth Fairy.

🧚 Saturday is special!

Holiday Puzzles

Puzzles are 3x3 grids with 3 connected columns, meaning two-word expressions must go across all 3 rows and down all 3 columns.

Beginner mode color codes every piece as yellow or green.
Standard mode gets one word already placed at the start, but offers no grouping, no color coding until it's solved.
Hard mode, as usual, gets no clues at all.

Today:

Your Streaks:

Your Lifetime:

How Do You Compare?
Your lifetime score shown against every game of Wordcels ever played.

Click to see the meaning of any of today's phrases or compound words.

Additional Valid Pairs

These weren't part of the solution but you may have spent time considering them.

Super words pair in both directions and make Wordcels possible. At least two are in every standard puzzle. The more super words, the harder a puzzle may be. Today had

Super words pair in both directions and make Wordcels possible. A holiday puzzle has at least one right at the center. Today's had

Left-handed and right-handed words can make a puzzle a bit easier.

Left words almost always start a phrase, but don't finish one. Right words almost always finish but don't start.

Left Words:

Right Words:

Know a phrase that could break this rule? Let me know.

Wordcels the game celebrates people who love words and especially two-word expressions.

The term wordcels comes from internet memes.

For several years the term "shape rotator" was used to poke fun at people with high visualspatial skills. Shape rotators may be able to rotate 3D objects in their heads and construct amazing contraptions, but have trouble with people and might use the wrong "there" in their writing. Some might think, Nikola Tesla.

In 2021 a user of X (then twitter) named Roon coined a term for the "opposite" type who skew heavily to high verbal intelligence. He dubbed them, wordcels. Wordcels may be great writers, speakers or leaders of people, but may fail to accomplish practical tasks in the real world. Some might think, Alexander Hamilton.

The 'cel' ending of wordcel derives from another internet meme reflecting frustration of not getting something one feels they deserve. The rise of tech jobs and concurrent loss of revenue in many journalistic fields, left some 'wordcels' frustrated they were earning less than peers who could write some computer code.

Whether you are a shape rotator, a wordcel, or some balanced mix of the two, Wordcels the game welcomes you with a daily puzzle. Wordcels companion, the t-shirt puzzle, does the same from the shape rotation end of the spectrum. Enjoy.

Moves are counted? As is life, as is Wordcels - some people like to keep score. Wordcels scoring is based on the number of moves you make to get to the solution. The fewer the moves, the better the score. To see your move count set Move Counts to "Always" in Settings.

If you don't care about score, set Move Counts to "no biggie" in Settings and just enjoy the solve.
How moves are counted When any word already on the game board changes cells, one move is counted.

When a word currently on the game board (the upper portion of the screen) is put into a new cell, one move is counted. Whether it is moved to a new cell on the game board, or to a cell in the word bank, it costs one move.

If each word dragged from the word bank to the game board lands in the correct position on first try, you can obtain a perfect score of zero. Many people use the Go All In feature ↑↑↑ to assist in this.

If one word on the game board is placed on top of another word on the game board, the two words swap places, and one move is counted. Swapping game board words with word bank words costs one move.

If three words tied together in a group is moved or swapped with other words on the game board, it counts as one move.

Using the slider bars on the right-side of each row, you can slide an entire row, containing zero to five words, up (or down), pushing one or both other rows down (or up) at cost of one move.
Organize words in the word bank first. All the words start out below the game board in an area called the word bank. You can move words around in the word bank without any cost in moves. A great way to get a lower score is to organize words in the word bank first.

Start by finding word pairs and put them together. Then look for the words that really only pair with one other word.

Then see if you can find three, two-word pairs that can be arranged vertically so they make common two-word phrases going down as well. If you can, then move those three up into the game board in a white, connected column.

Use the progress indicators (or lack thereof). Sometimes you will put three words down in a row on the game board, and you just KNOW that these words form great, two-word expressions (e.g. grateful dead, dead center). Despite this, they don't form a group that has a background color and moves together.

It means one of the three words doesn't go with the others as part of the overall puzzle solution. There are often two-word pairs that make a totally common and valid two-word expression, but are not part of the solution because the whole puzzle has to fit together.

It may be that one of words forms multiple pairs. It may be one or more of the words will make a pair going vertically in column 2 or 4, instead of horizontally (e.g. "dead last" going horizontally and "dead center" going vertically).
Look for left-handed and right-handed words. These are words that probably pair with something after them, but not before, or vice versa.

For example, if you see "Pandora's" you can probably guess the word "box" comes next (Pandora's box). It is highly unlikely there will be another word before Pandora's, so it must go in the left-most column.

On the other hand if you see a word like "processor" it's probably going to go in the far right column, with a word like "word" in front of it (word processor).

As a rule of thumb, the longer a word is, the more likely it is to be left or right-handed. A 10 letter word in a Wordcels puzzle has a 90% chance of being left or right-handed. Start every puzzle by looking for the longest words.
Super Words go in the middle. A Super Word is a very promiscuous word that pairs with lots of other words in both directions.

For example, "dead" can be followed by both "center", "last". And dead can be preceded by both "grateful" and "living".

Therefore it's a good bet "dead" is one of the two key Super Words in columns 2 and 4 of the middle row. But be careful. Some puzzles have up to 6 Super Words.