Pathwords

The Archive, the Keyboard, and Playing Without an Account

28 August 2026 · Pathwords · Journal

Still here when you are

Pathwords is built to be played in a browser you already have, on a day you already opened, or on a day you missed. There is no account. The archive is free. The keyboard is a first-class way in, not a fallback. Drag and tap are first-class too. This page is why those choices sit together. It is not a second copy of the five rules.

The through-line is simple: the game should still be here when you are. A free past-day archive, three equal inputs, local midnight, and progress in this browser are the same idea written four ways. None of them requires a login wall. Pathwords at pathwords.co is a letter-path puzzle for enjoyment. Soft engagement. Clear product craft. Published by Pathwords.

The archive is a product

Every local calendar day ships three official boards: Mini 3×3 (words at least 3 letters), Classic 4×4 (words at least 4 letters), and Mega 5×5 (words at least 4 letters). When that day is over, the boards do not disappear behind a paywall and they do not ask you to sign in. They move into the archive. Opening an old day is a normal way to play, not a lesser mode you unlock later.

Archive puzzles are streak-neutral. They do not spend today's streak and they do not extend it. If you open a Tuesday from last month on a Friday night, Friday's streak is untouched. That is deliberate. A backlog should not punish a daily habit, and a daily habit should not be a reason to lock the backlog. Each archived board also has its own hint pool. The three free hints on last Tuesday's Classic are not the three hints on today's Classic. Using one does not borrow from the other.

There is no pressure to only play today. Missed a week? The archive is how you catch up for pleasure, not for streak repair. Finished today's Genius early and still want a path? Open a past day. The official daily remains the day's ship. The archive is the honest shelf of past ships. Soft habit, not streak guilt as a sales tool.

Kids mode, a Settings toggle, keeps its own streaks and an easier Classic or Mini lexicon. Mega is not filtered by that toggle. How a board is built is the pipeline note. This one is about opening an old day on purpose.

Web archive versus iOS extra play

On the web, the answer for past days is the archive: free, streak-neutral, own hint pool per board. The official iOS app, Pathwords Puzzle, is a separate property from the same publisher. It is not a login wall for the website. Where the app offers Play Another as a way to keep going after the daily, the website's designed answer for past official days is the archive. This page does not sell the app and does not pitch store features. The contrast is only so the web product is clear: past days live on the shelf, not behind an account.

Same eight-way paths, including diagonals. Same listed scoring (2 points per letter toward Genius, bonus 1 point, optional). Same untimed feel. Different doors for "one more board" versus "a day I missed."

No account, on purpose

There is no Pathwords login on the web. Found words, scores, settings, streaks, hint counts, and a schema version are written to this browser. IndexedDB when it is available, localStorage if it is not, and memory if both are blocked. Clearing site data for pathwords.co erases them. They are not uploaded to a Pathwords server. The privacy page states that in lawyerly sentences. The product reason is simpler. A daily letter-path puzzle does not need a profile to be a daily letter-path puzzle.

The cost is real. A new phone does not inherit last month's Genius ranks. A second browser is a second save. Sync across devices would want an account, and an account would want a password reset and a support queue. This site is small. Progress in the browser is the honest version of that size. If you care about a particular archive day, finish it on the machine you opened it on, or accept that it will be a fresh board somewhere else.

Past days do not need a cloud profile to load. They need the dated puzzle and this browser's storage. No account is the constraint that makes the rest local.

Local midnight, not a worldwide hour

The daily reset is local midnight on your device. There is not a single UTC flip that makes Tuesday arrive in London and New York at the same instant. If your clock says Wednesday, Wednesday's Mini, Classic, and Mega are the official boards. An in-progress Tuesday stays in this browser's storage until you finish it or clear site data. Crossing midnight does not wipe a board you already started. It makes the new day available.

That choice matches how people actually sit down to a puzzle. A late night in Chicago should not be scored as a missed Tuesday because a server in another timezone already rolled the file. It also matches the archive: a day is a local date, and the archive is a list of those dates. If you travel across a date line, your device's local date is still the one that matters. The site will not try to be clever about where you were yesterday.

Local midnight and the free archive together remove a common daily-game anxiety: that missing the worldwide hour means the puzzle is gone. Here the day rolls when your clock does, and yesterday stays playable on the shelf.

One streak freeze a calendar month

If you miss a day, one automatic streak freeze is applied per calendar month. It is applied for you. You do not spend a token and you do not watch an ad to keep the number. The Stats page shows that it happened. A second miss in the same month breaks the streak. Next month you get another freeze.

The freeze is a small mercy, not a streak product. Pathwords is untimed and the archive is free. A broken streak is not supposed to be a reason to open the archive in shame or to skip the site for a week. One missed day in a busy month should not be a ritual. Two is a gap. The calendar month is the window because it is a window people already understand. It is not a rolling thirty days and it is not a purchased continue.

Archive play cannot rescue a freeze you already used, and it cannot spend one. Streaks only care about official days you finish on the day they are official, in this browser, for that mode (and for the kids stream if that is the lexicon you had open). Speed Streak, the short multiplier on fast listed words, is a different thing with a similar name. It does not touch the calendar streak. The how-to explains the multiplier. This page will not re-teach it.

Keyboard-first, not keyboard-also

You can drag a path, tap tile by tile, or type. Typing is not a hidden desktop cheat. If the letters you type can be spelled as an eight-way path on this board (corners count, no tile twice), the tiles light up. If they cannot, the field says so before Enter. Arrow keys move a cursor, space adds the letter under the cursor, Enter submits, Backspace steps back, Escape clears. That is the same graph the diagonals note describes. The keyboard is just a way to walk it without a finger on the glass.

This matters on a laptop the way drag matters on a phone. A daily you open beside a cup of coffee should not demand a touchscreen. It should also not punish a phone user for lacking a keyboard. Three inputs, one ruleset. Near-misses are still called too short before they are called invalid English. A listed word the keyboard found is the same listed word a drag would have found, at the same two points per letter.

On a phone, drag through centres or tap for precision. None of these inputs is a lesser mode. Archive days accept all three. Hints work the same from a keyboard: three free hints per puzzle per mode, archive days included. If you have used them and a listed word is still missing, the web extra is a house video on this origin, not a Google rewarded unit.

Keyboard and drag together are why "playing without an account" is not only a storage story. It is also an input story. Open pathwords.co on whatever device you have and walk the same eight-way graph. Progress stays local. The rules stay shared.

Why no pressure to only play today

Daily games often teach a quiet lesson: if you are not here for today's board, you are late. Pathwords tries not to teach that. The official daily still matters. Three modes each local day, Genius from listed words, a streak that tracks finishing on the day. But the archive is free, streak-neutral, and hint-complete on its own terms. Opening a past Mega because you like longer lists is a normal evening. Opening last month's Mini because you have ten minutes is also normal.

That posture fits an untimed puzzle. There is no clock racing you to finish before midnight for points. Local midnight opens the next day. It does not erase the shelf. Bonus words and the fifth star remain optional on archive days the same way they do on today. Stars mark how far into a sitting you got. Genius remains one hundred percent of the listed-word maximum. Soft markers, not a report card about your worth.

Lived evenings without a login wall

A lived evening can be typing Classic on a laptop after dinner. No account prompt. Arrow keys across a quiet centre. Enter when STONE would list on an invented board in another journal note. Progress stays in this browser. You close the tab. Tomorrow the same machine still knows how far you got.

A lived weekend can be the archive on purpose. You open last month's Mega because you want a wider field, not because you owe a streak. The sitting is streak-neutral. Hints belong to that board alone. Genius still means the listed maximum. Soft habit, not repair theater.

A lived travel day can roll at local midnight wherever your phone thinks it is. Chicago Tuesday becomes Chicago Wednesday when the device clock says so. An unfinished board from the night before is still sitting in storage. The new day is available beside it. No worldwide hour shamed the late night.

These scenes invent no features. They only slow down what the product already offers. Free streak-neutral archive. Keyboard, drag, and tap as equal inputs. Local midnight. Browser progress. One freeze a calendar month. Kids toggle with its own streaks on Classic or Mini. House video for an extra hint after the three free ones, not an AdSense sales pitch.

Soft craft, claim-safe

No medical claims, IQ boosts, clinically proven results, or "rewires your brain" theater. Soft yes: enjoyment, engagement, a free archive, three equal inputs, browser progress, local midnight, one freeze a month. Miss a day if life is loud.

What this is for

A free archive, a local day, a freeze you do not have to remember, and a keyboard (and drag, and tap) that is allowed to play are the same idea: the game should still be here when you are. No account is the constraint that makes the rest local and honest. If those tradeoffs ever change, the privacy policy will say so, and this page will have to be rewritten instead of waved at.

Pathwords is published by Pathwords at pathwords.co. It is not ThinkFun PathWords, not pathwords.co.uk, and not Pathwords App by Richard Arnold. Play today's board on the homepage. Open the archive when you want a past sitting. Type, drag, or tap. Same eight-way paths either way.

What changed

Play today’s board

Pathwords · pathwords.co·privacy@pathwords.co