Knotwords, a crossword-like puzzle game without a clue list, is an evolution of Wordle with complex puzzles and easy structure. Wordle, a five-word puzzle challenge created in October 2021, has been a favourite for many who love to put their brains to test 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 is now recommending Knotwords, an everyday puzzle challenge, which is said to give a tough competition to Wordle. While Wordle led to set inspiration for creation of several puzzle games like Lewdle, Sweardle, Heardle or Globle, nothing has managed to get attention of Wardle before as Knotwords.

Knotwords has been developed by Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger. Gage, earlier a designer for spaceship-in-crisis sim Tharsis, announced the new game Knotwords on Twitter last week, describing it as “a minimal, elegant logic puzzle — with words.” His tweet was endorsed by Wardle, who mentioned Knotwords as an “incredibly elegant daily word game.”

How to play Knotwords

If you have played Wordle before, Knotwords might appear easy to you. However, instead of just one, this game has several Wordle quizzes arranged in a crossword format. The puzzle is divided into sections, usually Tetris-like parts, which provide a few alphabets. The player needs to fit these alphabets in the particular section in such a way that forms a word perfectly. The task doesn’t end here. To complete a Knotword puzzle, one has to ensure the all the rows and columns end up forming a valid English word each.

If you get stuck in between, 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’ in-game timer.

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

Where to play Knotwords

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