Wordle Creator promotes Knotwords, a new daily puzzle challenge

Knotwords, a crossword type puzzle game with no clue list, is an evolution of Wordle with complex puzzles and simple structure. Wordle, a five-word puzzle challenge created in October 2021, has been a favorite for many who like to challenge their brains every day. Developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle, the game is now owned and published by The New York Times Company, which took over the rights in January 2022. Three months later, Wardle now recommends Knotwords, a daily puzzle challenge, which is supposed to give tough competition to Wordle. While Wordle has inspired the creation of several puzzle games like Lewdle, Sweardle, Heardle or Globle, nothing has managed to catch Wardle’s attention before as Knotwords.

Knotwords was developed by Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger. Gage, previously designer of the crisis-ridden spacecraft simulator Tharsis, announcement the new Knotwords game on Twitter last week, describing it as “a minimal and elegant logic puzzle – with words”. Her tweet was endorsed by Wardle, who mentioned Knotwords as an “incredibly stylish everyday word game”.

How to play Knotwords

If you’ve ever played Wordle, Knotwords may seem easy to you. However, instead of just one, this game features multiple Wordle quizzes organized as crossword puzzles. The puzzle is divided into sections, usually Tetris-like parts, which provide some alphabets. The player must fit these alphabets in the particular section so as to form a word perfectly. The task does not end there. Completing a Knotword puzzle requires ensuring that all rows and columns each end up forming a valid English word.

If you’re stuck between the two, Knotwords offers a hint feature that gives a definition of any word that will be somewhere on the board. However, this comes with a three-minute time penalty, which is added to the player’s in-game timer.

To watch a quick gameplay trailer, you can check out the YouTube clip provided by the developers on the game’s official page.

Where to play Knotwords

You can download the Wordle but complex Knotwords puzzle game from App Store, also Google Play Store with 30 puzzles for one month. The game is also available on Steam (Mac/PC) where you can buy the full version for $4.99 (around Rs. 380) per year or a one-time purchase of $11.99 (around Rs. 920). With a 10% discount, the game is available at Rs. 359 in India. The full version gives you access to old Knotwords archives, tips, personal stats as well as color themes.