Playing Pathwords Together

One board, two people

Some of the best Pathwords sittings happen with someone leaning over your shoulder. A partner on the couch says, "Wait, go back, there's a word in that corner." A friend across the table reads the letters upside down and still sees something you missed.

This note is about that kind of sitting. One board, one device, two people. You pass the phone back and forth, call out what you spot, and let the other person trace the path. Nobody keeps score against anybody.

The rules you're both playing by

Pathwords at pathwords.co gives you a grid of letters and asks you to find words by moving through tiles that touch. A step can go up, down, sideways, or along any of the four diagonals. Each word is one unbroken trail. You can't land on the same tile twice in one word. The next word can use any tile again.

The board comes with a list of everyday words. Each listed word earns 2 points per letter, and those points carry the rank from Start through Good, Great, and Awesome to Genius. Genius means you've found every listed word, 100% of the listed maximum. Any other real word you trace is a bonus word. Bonus words earn 1 point per letter, collect in a separate pot, and count toward a fifth star. They never change Genius.

You can pick Mini, a 3×3 grid where words need three letters. Classic is 4×4 and Mega is 5×5, and both of those ask for at least four. The official daily has no clock. Everyone gets the same board that day, and the next one arrives at local midnight on your device.

pathwords.co is published by Pathwords and is not ThinkFun PathWords, not pathwords.co.uk, and not other lookalike apps.

What together means here

We should say this plainly so nobody goes looking for a feature. Pathwords has no multiplayer. There are no accounts, no sync between devices, no co-op mode, and no head-to-head match. When we talk about playing together, we mean two people sharing one screen in the same room.

That has one practical effect. Progress is saved in the browser you're playing in, and only there. Every word the two of you find lands in that one browser's progress, on whoever's phone or laptop you picked up. If you play on a partner's phone, the finds and the rank stay on their phone.

There's no public leaderboard either. The rank on the screen describes this board in this browser and compares nobody. The note on no leaderboard says more about that.

A made-up Classic board

We made up this Classic board for the scene below. It isn't a live daily, and the listed and bonus words are invented too.

C A L M
R E S T
O P I N
W L D E

The E in the second row is the busiest tile on the board. It touches eight neighbors: C, A, L, R, S, O, P, and I.

Spot it, call it, hand it over

Say you're holding the phone and a partner is sitting next to you. You run your eye down the left edge and see a word stacked there: C, R, O, W. You say, "Crow, left side, straight down." Then you tip the screen toward your partner and let them trace it. Their finger lands on the C and drags down four tiles. CROW goes in.

While you were reading the edge, your partner was reading the middle. "There's a spine in there," they say, and point at the S in the second row. This time they pass the phone to you. You start on the S, slide diagonally down and left to the P, then right to the I, right again to the N, and down to the E in the bottom corner. Five tiles, each one touching the last. SPINE goes in.

Now you swap again. You spot something in the lower left and talk your partner through it. "Start on the P. Down to the L. Up and left to the O. Then down to the W." Your partner follows the directions one tile at a time, and PLOW goes in.

That's the rhythm most shared sittings settle into. One person spots, the other traces. The caller gets to watch the word light up under someone else's finger. The tracer follows a word they didn't see, which often draws their eye to a corner they had been skipping.

When a called word won't trace

Calling words out loud means some of them won't work. On the board above, someone finds ROPE: the R in the second row, down to the O, right to the P, then up to the E. It goes in. Then comes the excited follow-up. "Roper!" The tracer drags R, O, P, E and reaches back for an R. The only R on the board is already in the word. A tile can't be used twice in one word, so the path stops there.

The game looks at the trail first and the word second. If a path skips over a tile, uses one twice, or comes up shorter than the minimum, that's the reason it gives. With two people at the screen, that order settles the question without anyone being wrong about English. The person who called it can laugh, and the person holding the phone can try ROPES instead. That trail runs from the E across to the S, and it works.

Turning the board across a table

When you sit across from each other, one of you is reading the grid upside down. Rotate can help with that. It turns the board on the screen so the letters face the other person. Rotation only changes the view. Every tile keeps the same neighbors, and a diagonal is still a diagonal.

Plenty of pairs never rotate at all and just lean in close. That works too.

Taking turns on listed and bonus words

A Pathwords board has two pots, and sharing a board can use them as an easy way to take turns. One of you looks for listed words, the everyday ones that move the rank toward Genius. The other goes after bonus words, the real but less common ones that land in their own pot. After a few finds, you trade jobs.

On the made-up board, suppose CREST, PEAR, SEAL, and DINE are on the list, and TINE ends up as a bonus word. Your partner calls PEAR and you trace it. P, up to the E, up again to the A, then diagonally down and left to the R. Then you call TINE and hand the phone over. The T at the right end of the second row, diagonally down and left to the I, right to the N, down to the E. TINE pays 1 point per letter in the bonus pot. It never moves Genius, so whose turn found it doesn't change anything.

Other pairs split short words from long ones, or use no system at all.

Keeping no score between you

The one habit we'd suggest is to keep score with nobody. The game already tracks points and rank for the board. A second tally of who found more only adds pressure.

Think of the rank as belonging to the board, and to both of you. When it reaches Genius, you got there together. If one of you spotted most of the words, the other probably traced half of them.

If someone gets stuck, the other can offer a nudge of their own, like "try the E in the middle." The game has hints as well. A hint points at a listed word that neither of you has found yet, and you can use one or skip it.

Sharing a board with a kid

A kid on your lap often cares more about dragging the path than about finding the word. Calling out a word and letting them trace it is a friendly way to split the job.

On pathwords.co, Kids is a toggle in Settings that loads a gentler word list on Classic or Mini, and there's also a separate Pathwords Kids app on iPhone and iPad. On the website, Mega stays the same. The note on Kids mode covers the details, and the path rules don't change.

Two devices, one daily board

Sometimes two people would each rather hold their own phone. Because everyone gets the same official board that day, each of you can play it on your own device and compare notes afterward. Each browser keeps its own progress, and nothing connects the two sittings inside the game. You just talk about it later. "Did you get the long one in the middle?"

The board changes at local midnight, so a friend a few time zones away may already be on tomorrow's board while you're still on today's.

When one of you is ready to stop

One of you is happy at Great. The other wants Genius. The board has no clock, and an unfinished board stays in that browser until it is finished or site data is cleared. So the person whose device it is can come back to it later on their own. Or the one who wants to keep going takes the phone, and the other gets up to put the kettle on.

Stopping early is fine as well. A few words found together, with a laugh over ROPER, is a complete sitting.

What this note covers

This is a craft note about two people sharing one board on one device. It doesn't describe a game mode. Pathwords is a puzzle for enjoyment, and playing it with someone beside you can make a sitting more talkative. We're not making any claim beyond that.

Open today's board

Head to pathwords.co for today's board and hand the phone to whoever is nearby. Call out the first word you see and let them trace it. Then switch.

Published by Pathwords