WORD HUNT:

A Guide to the GamePigeon Game

Originally authored by Marlo Ongkingco

(@kingcoism) on June 18, 2023

*Official asset found on developer PressKit[14]

UPDATE 03/02/25:

Ported this guide from Google Docs to Github Pages with HTML.

See my other work on my portfolio site here: https://mkingco.tech

UPDATE 01/12/24:

I’ve developed a Word Hunt clone that is playable on any device!

There are features to massively improve your score output. Play it here: https://mkingco.itch.io/gamepigeon-word-hunt

 

User Guide: Use the document outline to the left as a table of contents to navigate this guide.

Abstract

The Lore

Word Hunt is a word minigame included in the GamePigeon IOS app developed by Vitalii Zlotskii[1]. The actual Word Hunt minigame was not included in GamePigeon’s initial 5-game release in September of 2016[2][4] (which surprisingly included a Poker minigame removed two years later in Update 1.0.22.5), but was later included alongside a batch of 10 additional games[3] that December. The main appeal of GamePigeon would be apparent following the release of iOS 10, which allowed the game’s integration with the iPhone Messages app to be played with any iMessage contact[2]. Though preceded in concept by popular board games such as Word Search and Boggle, Word Hunt would put the titular game in the hands of every iPhone user, making it a household name in a much more accessible digital format.

Why Do People Play Word Hunt?

A simple game: find as many valid English words as you can in a 4x4 grid of randomized letters by connecting letters adjacently. A toddler could easily pick up the general gameplay of Word Hunt in a matter of minutes; perhaps this simplicity is what draws people to the game. One can pick up their phone, hunt words for 80 seconds, then unplug and continue whatever work they had previously been putting off. Of course, ease of play is one of the major tenets of GamePigeon’s success and the guiding principle behind the design of their minigames as a whole; a multiplayer game as large as, say, Monopoly, would be much too cumbersome to fit into the general Messages application. It could be speculated that this is the reason behind the inclusion of quick party games such as Dots & Boxes and Four in a Row, games light enough to be played with pencil and paper. Though the simplicity philosophy underlines every game GamePigeon has to offer, this seamlessness and simple play is but one facet of the game’s sweeping popularity.

Beyond making all of its games accessible and familiar, GamePigeon’s greatest appeal relies on the simple fact that it has multiplayer integration—its competitive philosophy. What good is a game if you cannot rise above your opponent? What better feeling is there than doubling, even tripling your foe’s score and increasing your win count? Why make games playable in Messages if not to trash talk the other party afterwards? Competition breeds strategy, and strategy is what keeps you playing. Word games are no stranger to this loop of strategic competition either– just look at Scrabble and its widely-popular spin-off Words With Friends which dominated the App Store many years ago. With this in mind, Word Hunt can be seen as its perfect successor in every way.

What makes it a perfect successor? After the introduction of the Word Bites (a minigame more positionally akin to Scrabble) to GamePigeon’s arsenal, Zlotskii organized it as well as the existing Anagrams and Word Hunt minigames into a category he called “Word Games” (pictured below). However, in the coming months, Word Hunt continued to dominate the category, leaving Word Bites and Anagrams to the wayside. Why?

(Official asset found under in-app GamePigeon Store)

Engagement Criteria

After much deliberation, I have devised a series of fundamental criteria wherein some word games fail and others win in the scheme of player enjoyment and engagement:

  1. Haptic Feedback
  2. Sound Design
  3. Pace
  4. Scoring
  5. Improvability

        I found the above criteria to be the main areas which set each game apart in terms of engagement: (1) haptic feedback, in the form of focused phone vibration, provides a crucial tactile response necessary for player immersion. Usually, larger and more focused vibrations in shorter intervals of time tend to increase engagement; (2) sound design, while somewhat consistent throughout all of the games, have slight differences in each. The most common element shared between the three games is a “success” tone that rises in pitch with more letters. Frequency (how often a sound plays) should also be considered in player immersion; (3) pace. Typically, a player should not feel the time going by during a game. For all three games, this is usually determined by a player’s skill level and pattern-seeking ability. However, good minigames should be able to progress regardless of a user’s prior experience. A minigame’s total duration is the largest factor for this. However, the length of time a game can occupy the player is significant; (4) scoring. The methods in which words are scored differs game-to-game. The interaction of the highest possible score per board, actual scores achieved, and player skill heavily influence the player’s engagement. Akin to gambling for a “jackpot!”, if the player scores the same high number on average, the player will not receive the same “hit” of dopamine as if they score low on average and receive a incredibly standout score on every 10th, 20th, or 50th game. The range of possible scores and the player’s ability to achieve the higher end of that range is crucial in determining enjoyment; (5) improvability, or the ability of a player to notice and feel tangible progress and improvement, is a classic video game design element that determines a player’s decision to come back to a game. This goes hand-in-hand with scoring. The level of strategy required for a minigame greatly influences this criteria.

Analysis: Anagrams vs. Word Bites vs. Word Hunt:

Let us analyze each of the games in the “Word Games” category considering each of the prior criterion, in an order (which I believe to be) of increasing popularity:

Anagrams:

  1. Haptic feedback. Vibrations occur upon pressing the “ENTER” button and achieving a valid word, and does not change in magnitude for higher-scoring words. I believe Anagrams to be the worst offender of this criteria.

  1. Sound design. Contains a success tone with higher pitches for longer words. A valid 6-letter word (the highest possible count; a “Bingo”) layers on a pleasing chord upon enter. Anagrams’s biggest offense is the inclusion of an error tone upon entering an invalid word. It could be arguable that this increases immersion, but it certainly docks points on user enjoyability.

  1. Pace. Instead of a swipe-and-drag interface, the user must tap individual letters to spell out a word. This inevitably leads to misinputs, especially for those with larger screens. The duration of the game is shorter at 60 seconds, compared to the usual 80, but for the majority of players the entirety of the game remains uninteresting.

  1. Scoring. The restriction to only 6-letter words immediately lowers the ceiling for high score values. The amount of possible words spelled with 6 letters also has a hard limit, minimizing the range of scores. The inclusion of an ENTER button is also questionable– for the other minigames, words are scored automatically upon being sensed as “valid,” but in Anagrams the player must guess whether a word is valid or not before submitting. This extra roadblock makes gameplay frustrating. For less-skilled players, this means entire games can go by without scoring a single good word.

  1. Improvability. There is very little strategy other than guessing quickly. A wordsmith will always prevail in this game over one with a smaller vocabulary.

Word Bites

  1. Haptic feedback. Occurs automatically upon a valid word. While less frequent than Hunt, Bites allows for multiple scored words per move, sometimes leading to a cascade of haptic feedback. Word Bites is respectable in this category.

  1. Sound design. The rising-pitch effect lends itself very well to this game. Because the same “success” sound plays for words containing 6-letters or more, good boards can lead to an audible increase in progression as the player stacks letters. The wood block sound effect upon picking up a letter block also greatly helps immersion. Arguably more satisfying sound design but relies somewhat on player skill.

  1. Pace. Heavily dependent on player skill. Much more time is spent looking for words and easily runs out of valid words, especially without an “S” letter. Often, several seconds are lost at the end attempting to find combinations not already used. However, the game notably allows for two-finger drag, leading to movement that can be much swifter[5] than Word Hunt.

  1. Scoring. Words are scored the same as Word Hunt (see: Rules - Scoring). Though on average players obtain less words, some boards allow for lengthy combinations and the larger 8x9 board size allows for frequent 6-, 7-, and 8-letter words. Less total words but easier higher-scoring words lead to a much greater score range than Word Hunt.

  1. Improvability. Word Bites has a natural learning curve somewhat steeper than Word Hunt, with a wider array of strategies that can be used. Almost no guessing is involved as valid words are plenty, but certain methods such as horizontal-focus, vertical-focus, big-word-focus, and clumping[6] provide certain advantages and disadvantages. The fact that there is no obvious one-way-to-play is a double-edged sword; though it increases variety, players sticking to a worse strategy will not feel as if they are improving, while another player mastering a better strategy will improve.

Word Hunt

  1. Haptic feedback. Immediately provides feedback upon linking a valid word, making it uniquely necessary to the gameplay. Frequency depends on speed of the player. (Note: Word Hunt has a way of making each move feel intentional, while many words can occur by accident in Word Bites. The dopamine rush provided by this haptic feedback is conditioned by the player’s choice, not by accident)

  1. Sound design. Much more rhythmic than Word Bites. One can gauge how well they are performing by the frequency of the “success” sound. So while it may often be less dopamine-inducing than Bites, this design is once again crucial to the gameplay.

  1. Pace. Fastest out of all three games[7]. Although still tied to player skill, much more happens visually in Hunt to where the player feels like something is happening, even if they aren’t scoring highly. Ultimately, pace is decided moreso due to RNG than any other factor; on a very bad board, there may rarely be some dead time at the end of the round where no further moves can be done. On good boards, one might feel as if they ran out of time and could have gone faster to score more words.

 

  1. Scoring. While having less of a score range than Bites, Hunt can still vary heavily in magnitude. The base 4x4 grid, while restricting, also closes the gap enough to lead to very close matches against the opponent, increasing player enjoyment. Again, RNG largely decides the highest score of a game, which leads to more “jackpot” moments.

  1. Improvability. Word Hunt has one prevailing way to play the game: speed. The visualization and building of a word are certainly factors into the strategy, but at higher-level gameplay, speed is usually what determines games. Hunt arguably provides the greatest feeling of progression as the player unlocks faster and faster game play.

        Word Hunt’s victories in all 5 criterion provide an explanation to its massive popularity over the other two word games. Its physical design elements in haptic feedback and sound design lend a hand to the gameplay, it’s one of the faster-paced games in the GamePigeon inventory with very little dead time, and it balances player skill with player reward in a unique fashion that drives users to keep playing and improving. That last criteria, improvability, is arguably the most significant, and is what I will be devoting my focus to thusly.

This guide aims to explore the much deeper intricacies of the game of Word Hunt, beyond the casual play and into the physical and mental aspects of game performance. This guide will provide several tips and strategies to scoring higher in games, based on my trials and tribulations in practice.

The Rules

Base Game

Improvement at Word Hunt requires that you know every base rule and feature in Word Hunt:

  1. You play on a 4x4 square grid of letter tiles.                                       (see: Rules - Boards)
  2. You play asynchronously against one opponent.
  3. You and your opponent’s board are identical (letters are in the same positions).
  4. You are given 80 seconds to spell words.
  5. You spell words by swiping and holding the screen.
  6. Letters must be connected adjacently (vertical, horizontal, diagonal) to spell a word.
  7. You cannot use tiles more than once or “undo” a letter after you swipe it.
  8. A score is added to your total upon spelling a valid word and lifting your finger.
  9. Valid words must be at least 3 letters in length.
  10. Valid words must be in the English dictionary.                          (see: Rules - Valid Words)
  11. Words with more letters score higher.                                        (see: Rules - Score Theory)
  12. The player with the highest score wins.
  13. A draw (equal score) does not count as a win for either player.

Boards

        The default free “map”* is a 4x4 square grid. However, 3 additional map layouts can be unlocked with the one-time purchase of GamePigeon+ (see next section for pricing). Though these layouts are larger in size, the 80-second timer remains constant for each. Strategies will vary depending on the layout being used. This guide’s general strategies in the “Guide to Success” section will apply and assume the use of the default board, though quick strategies for the pay-walled boards will be expanded upon in this section only.

Word Hunt Boards:

Common Name

Size

Strategy

Layout

Default board

4x4

full square

Default strategy

(this guide assumes

default 4x4 board)

(solver)

O-board

5x5

(missing corner

and center tiles)

Search for shorter words along the outer radius and the four vertical/horizontal 5-tile strips

X-board

5x5

(missing middle tile

from all 4 directions)

Search for suffixes along the diagonals; otherwise, search within the 3x3 center

Big board

5x5

full square

Search for long, easily readable words; otherwise, stick to one smaller area

(solver)

*GamePigeon uses the term “map” to describe the tiling; they are equivalent to this guide’s use of the term “board.”

        As the O-board is missing its crucial center tile, 5-letter strings and above become much more difficult than the full 5x5 board, and arguably even the default board. Therefore, you should take advantage of the 5-letter areas the map does provide. Readable words may be few and restricted to counter-clockwise strings. Players cannot string letters diagonally adjacent to missing corner and center tiles, creating one-tile “bridges” between each missing tile. These one-wide connections, if an uncommon letter, can functionally block of entire sections of the board, making longer words very difficult to achieve. Aim for a higher quantity of shorter words when playing against an opponent. Speed is a major factor on this map.

        The X-board provides a bit more flexibility than the O-board, as the rule of diagonal restriction doesn’t affect word count as severely. Instead, one-tile bridges on this board only create dead-ends, with the other areas of the board remaining open.

GamePigeon+

        GamePigeon+ is an enhancement of the base GamePigeon game that provides additional avatar customization, unlocks extra game modes for a handful of minigames, and disables advertisements permanently. Included in the game modes are 3 additional board layouts for the Word Hunt minigame (see: Rules - Boards) that can be sent for free to opponents without GamePigeon+. As of June 2023, GamePigeon+ is available for $4.99 as a one-time purchase.

        For practical uses in Word Hunt, GamePigeon+ does not hide any important gameplay behind its paywall, so players do not gain any advantage in purchasing it. However, the cosmetic enhancements it provides may interest you, as well as the quality-of-life improvement from the lack of ads. Hardcore Word Hunt players may be interested in buying GamePigeon+ for the additional board layouts. If you have hundreds of games under your belt and play Word Hunt on a semi-regular basis, there is no harm in having the extra board options to add some variety.

Score Theory

        Upon spelling a valid word, a certain score amount is added to a player’s total score upon letting go of their finger from the screen. The player with the greatest score wins the match, and +1 is added to their win count (shown by a crown icon in the corner of the minigame). Equal scores constitute a draw.

The scoring of Word Hunt (and Word Bites) words works as follows:

(10-letter words and above are rare and are excluded in the table below)

Number of Letters

Score Added

3

100

4

400

5

800

6

1400

7

1800

8

2200

9

2600

Note the following:

where n = number of letters in the word.

(It can be assumed words with 10 letters and above follow the same formula.)

Time and Accuracy

        A missing factor here, however, is time. Suppose it takes half a second to find and spell a 3-letter word. Also assume it takes one second to find and spell a 4-letter word. The score value per second (sps) of the 4-letter word is still twice as much as the 3-letter word. Similarly, suppose it takes 4 seconds to find and spell a 6-letter word. The score value per second of the 4-letter word actually beats out the 6-letter by 50sps.

        Another trend that correlates with score and word length is accuracy. Though typically less relevant, accuracy goes hand-in-hand with time. Often times when you spell out a word, you may spell it incorrectly, or accidentally swipe the wrong letter tile than the one you wanted. This mistake is always a constant in Word Hunt; although you can lessen it through practice (see: Guide to Success - Improving Accuracy), there will always remain a minute percentage of words that you accidentally misspell. Additionally, since you cannot “undo” or retread a letter once you have swiped it, you must then let go and start the word again from the beginning, losing precious time. This means for longer words, the opportunity for a mistake increases for every additional letter it contains, and the opportunity for longer time losses increases exponentially (see below).

        The relationship between the time it takes to spell a word and the number of letters a word has is finicky, but crucial in understanding how to enhance your gameplay. Handling these tradeoffs will take many games to tweak and improve, but in general, mid-range words balance the time and score line very well. Thinking optimally, shorter words (3-4) provide too little score payout for higher accuracy and a smaller time loss, while longer words (7-9) risk too low an accuracy and too big of a time loss for marginally higher scores. Therefore, on an average board, players should aim for a higher quantity of mid-range words to balance their score/time tradeoffs, if possible. This strategy also takes advantage of the unique 200-point boost from increasing a word’s length from 5 letters to 6. Of course, if a board contains a high volume of easily-spellable, high-scoring words, players should take the points that they can, but they should notice and be mindful when they are taking too much effort on one word or are spending more than 2-3 seconds on one.  

Valid Words

        To determine valid words, GamePigeon’s word games most likely use an earlier version of the Collins Scrabble Words (CSW2021[10]) dataset as its base English dictionary[9]. This was determined from the following method:

Dictionary:

Word Hunt*

CSW21 (SOWPODS)

NASPA 2020

ENGLISH dCode

Top 7

Highest-

Scoring Words:

*Word Hunt’s word list dictionary can be found upon clicking“View All Words” after completing a game against an opponent (see Rules - Revealing Words)

        Using the automated Word Hunt Solver, which contains six English dictionary datasets (and sets in seven other languages), the Word Hunt board above was analyzed for every possible valid word according to each dataset and were sorted by highest-scoring (longest) words in a descending manner to better visualize the closest-looking set to the official Word Hunt dictionary. Using process of elimination, the word “STAMNOS” is shared between the Word Hunt and CSW21 sets and is absent in the NASPA set. The word “MASTERSON” is present in dCode’s full English set, but is not a valid word in the Word Hunt set. Therefore, it can be deduced that the Collins Scrabble Words 2021 dictionary is the current set used in Word Hunt. It can be seen, however, that the word “MESTERS” is present in CSW21 but is not a valid Word Hunt word; it may be possible that Word Hunt utilizes an earlier version of Collins Scrabble Words.

        It must also be noted that Word Hunt’s official dictionary was actually modified with Update 2.2.0 to allow words longer than 8 letters (see: Miscellaneous - Changelog). Thus, it is likely that before 2020, GamePigeon used the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary[15] (OSPD), which invalidated words longer than 8 letters. The post-2020 change in dictionaries also falls in line with the change in the rules for offensive words and slurs – the OSPD does not include inappropriate terminology in its word list, while CSW and NASPA do. As you may have seen during gameplay, some offensive words are allowed and scored in Word Hunt, though such words are censored to align with App Store age rating policy[citation needed].

        Knowing the official dataset used in Word Hunt is significant in gameplay; though it is inefficient to study individual words, knowing which words are valid and which are not may give a player the edge in speed and spelling-time. Using the example given above, the words “MESTERS” or “AMSTERS” take significantly more time to spell out, being longer words, but are ultimately invalid in the Word Hunt dictionary. A few seconds are wasted here on invalid words could have been spent spelling out shorter, valid words with the knowledge of the CSW21 and dCode dictionary discrepancies.

Revealing Words

        With the release of GamePigeon 2.2.0, Zlotskii added the ability to reveal the full list of valid words possible in a board after a game is completed (see: Miscellaneous - Changelog). The player and their opponent must both finish the match before a reveal can be prompted. New players are allotted a certain amount of free “reveals,” shared between all minigames in the Word Games category. However, additional “reveals” can be purchased as bundles in the GamePigeon store (separate from GamePigeon+). The pricing for these bundles is as follows: 

# Reveals

Pricing

Value

20

$1.99

< $0.10 per reveal

10 reveals per $1

60

$4.99

> $0.083 per reveal

12 reveals per $1

100

$7.99

< $0.08 per reveal

12.5 reveals per $1

300

$14.99

< $0.05 per reveal

20 reveals per $1

        The reveal ability, while somewhat useful in the native app, does not constitute much of a tactical advantage to be purchasing it for money. Often times you may want to see which high-scoring words you missed, but more often than not such words are incredibly obscure and would not have occurred to you naturally. Another interesting metric could be the percentage of possible words you found that were possible on a board, but Word Hunt unfortunately does not display the total amount of possible words. Most unfortunately, though, Word Hunt does not show players a copy of the board they played after the game ends. Once the 80 second timer is up, players have no way of remembering the position of the letters, making reveals much less useful after the fact. In a future update where these mechanics are implemented, buying reveals may prove to be advantageous, but as of now most players are better off utilizing free alternatives for improvement such as dCode or The Word Finder.

A Guide to Success

        The following sections provide several philosophies behind word scoring that can be integrated into everyday play and can be used to gauge your level of success in Word Hunt. Synthesize these philosophies into your practice; I suggest playing a few practice games by yourself as you read, applying these methods one-by-one. If you have not already discovered single-player practice, the next section will describe how to set up this mode (see: A Guide to Success - Practice).

Practice

        For almost all GamePigeon minigames, sending a game to will prompt a “Waiting For Opponent” message, as the default procedure is to wait for your opponent to accept and play your game before you start gameplay. However, for reasons unknown, all GamePigeon games under the “Word Games” category allow you to immediately initiate the core gameplay without an initial response from the opposing number. This means you can abuse this to send and play as many Word Hunt games on your own as you wish. (Though GamePigeon is an iOS-exclusive application, the app does not check the OS of whichever number you are sending a game to. Thus, you can send and play Word Hunt to any non-iOS number, even automated numbers, without a response from the other line.)

        Practice is the core factor to success in Word Hunt. If you do not play games, you will not improve (If you need a consistent opponent to send games to at any time, message 702-929-5392). Take the time to schedule Word Hunt into your daily routine– if you have at least 80 seconds of free time per day, that is 80 seconds of Word Hunt practice allotted to you. Even just one game per day will prevent you from “rusting” and will prolong the mindsets that you will learn in this guide. It is also common to experience a sort of Tetris effect[11] with Word Hunt after many days of practice, as you may process words and grid patterns and even visualize entire Word Hunt games in your head while away from your phone.

        Try to practice the following methods on your phone as you read through this guide.

Warming Up

        Like any Olympic athlete, performing musician, or video game speedrunner may tell you, the importance of “warm-ups” is key to unlocking any high-achieving physical performance. A “warm-up” can consist of several factors: a physical

Quantity vs. Quality

        The age-old question: should I aim for more lower-scoring words, or less, higher-scoring words? In an ideal scenario, the obvious answer would be to do both. More high-scoring words will always trump all. However, the human brain simply isn’t equipped to instantly recognize the longest 8- and 9-letter words in a Word Hunt board; longer words require more processing power, which requires more time. Perhaps being conservative with one’s seconds and spelling shorter words more rapidly may deliver a better score payout. One must learn to handle the tradeoffs of time in order to maximize their scoring average.

        When considering these tradeoffs of quantity vs. quality, the most important factor in Word Hunt – and one you will soon be able to quickly recognize – is the readability of the board. Take a look at the following:

        Instinctively, if one were to evaluate the above board, one might say it was a “bad” board. Why?– To a normal player, no one word sticks out to them immediately; that is to say, the board is not very readable. Readability is a quality that can help one instantly determine their ending score range. After all, if a player cannot recognize the words on the board, it can surely be said that they will not have a very high score. This is a caveat that applies to all players of Word Hunt, no matter the skill level or vocabulary size.

        Above (to the right) is a list of the highest-scoring words possible on this board. Dhourra for 1800 points is the highest-scoring word, followed by 8 measly 5-letter words, then a slew of fifty-five 4- and 3-letter words. A player aiming to recognize the longest, highest-quality words (words longer than 4 letters) will, in total, earn 7400 points. A player focusing more on the quantity of words they achieve will earn 11,500 points. A novice player may even eke out the more common hoard and horde from the 5-letter set, increasing their score further.

        Of course, this hypothetical does entertain the extremes of this board: the average player will not exclusively set a floor on the length of words they spell, and will usually spell a mixture of long and short words in total. However, it does correctly exemplify the focus of this theorem: a good player will take advantage of a board’s readability. In a case like this, upon starting the game and reading the board, a player should make the judgment based upon the readability of the board whether they should take the time to look for longer words, or quickly spam as many shorter words as they can.

Board Viability

Importance of Vocabulary

        As with the debate around quality vs. quantity, a case can be made that a player who can recognize longer, more obscure words will prevail over a player with a lesser vocabulary. After all, unlike Scrabble, where letters are scored based on their rarity in English use, Word Hunt’s letters are weighted equally so that the length of the total word matters more. Simply knowing long words of any letters could be an advantage. But while not a non-factor, vocabulary is a much smaller tenet of Word Hunt success than one’s general pattern-seeking abilities. Recognizing suffixes and prefixes and whether a collection of letters could look like a valid word are much more relevant in a Word Hunt game.

        To continue the Scrabble comparison, you aren’t making words, you’re finding them; there are an infinite amount of words that aren’t valid in Scrabble than ones that are. Especially in a timed game like Word Hunt, it is much more important to know what words aren’t valid (so as not to waste time spelling them) than knowing which specific words you can make with this specific combination of letters. Word Hunt is not Anagrams. Once a timer is introduced, the game becomes a speed game. A slow wordsmith will not win over a guy with quick fingers and an average vocabulary. In a timed game, speed trumps vocabulary, always.

        That is not to say that improving your vocabulary won’t be beneficial at all; in Word Hunt, if you can recognize a word, you can certainly spell it. Ideally, players should improve both of these aspects, but the primary focus should be on speed. Most games are not decided upon who gets the more obscure words, but who can get the most words the quickest. The tactical advantage of recognizing one extra word out of the hundreds of thousands of valid words in Word Hunt’s dictionary is miniscule, and pales in comparison to gradually getting faster and faster at swiping and accurately spelling out words on your screen. One is a niche improvement while the other is a global improvement. A good Word Hunt player should maximize their improvement in the most efficient manner possible.

Improving Accuracy

Randomly Swiping

        Many new Word Hunt players I’ve seen tend to implement similar strategies: they’d spell the 1-2 most readable words on the board (4-5 letters), then once they’ve run out of easy words they swipe the screen randomly, hoping to somehow chain some obscure 3-letter word together by taking advantage of Word Hunt’s auto-validation feature. This method does seem to provide results and pools in an extra few hundred points (if they’re lucky), especially on boards with low readability. See the example board below:

        With a whopping 39 total words, over two-thirds of the possible words have only 3 letters, making an accidental chain much more likely to hit a valid word. After obvious words like “LINY” or “WILE”, the path to victory doesn’t seem clear; it might seem necessary to take your chances with the above method. However, for higher-level gameplay and for boards with a higher volume of valid words, this random swiping tactic introduces a few drawbacks that actually hinders your total score:

        Because of this, if you feel the need to be swiping randomly, you should be rethinking your strategy. Try reading the board for common letter combinations (-INY, WI-, -OO-) to spell words that more than likely seem valid. If you’re desperate, try any permutation of consonant-vowel-consonant. Intentional trial-and-error gets you much farther than an arbitrary accident, as you can learn from it; after enough games, you get to know which obscure words are actually common in most boards, and which seemingly-common words aren’t actually valid. If you truly believe you need to swipe randomly to eke out a cheeky victory, apply it only on dry boards like the above, where 3-letter words are the most abundant. Attempting to somehow chain a valid 4-letter word or higher will undoubtedly waste time and lower your overall score.

The Letter “S”

        “ In Word Hunt, there exist two kinds of boards:

        boards with an ‘S’ and boards without an ‘S’. ”

        Due to the letter “S” being so ubiquitous in the English dictionary, its presence in a Word Hunt board can dramatically alter scores and gameplay. Any spellable noun adjacent to an “S” on the board simply counts as another word, and counts for even more points than the noun as it contains more letters. A single “S” can therefore nearly double the amount of possible (and readable) words on the board and skyrocket the possible score up to the high 30-40K range. Because of this overwhelming power of the letter “S”, if a player sees a viable “S” on the board, they should keep the following in mind:

  1. Speed becomes the greatest priority.
  2. Five-letter words become more abundant and readable.
  3. Four-letter words become less powerful.
  4. Your opponent will also take advantage of the “S”.
  5. Don’t be scared to start a word with the “S”.
  6. You may accidentally retread the same words at a higher rate.

Abusing Letter Combinations

        When practicing your pattern-seeking, take the time at the beginning of the round and look for these adjacent letter combinations to maximize word length:

Prefixes

Two-Letter Combos

Suffixes
  • SH-, SP-, SL-, STR-
  • CL-, PL-, SL-, AL-, BL-
  • BR-, CR-, DR-, FR-, GR-, PR-, TR-, WR-
  • TH-
  • AN-
  • -OO-
  • -EA-
  • -OU-
  • -IE-
  • -RT-
  • -SE-
  • -AN, -ANS
  • -AW, -AWS
  • -ING, -INGS
  • -ER, -ERS
  • -ED, -EDS
  • -ERED
  • -TION, -TIONS
  • -SS
  • -CK

Tips & Tricks

within the Word Hunt game window. To turn on sound effects:

  1. Open the GamePigeon icon within Messages
  2. Above the game icons, click “Settings”
  3. Click the “Sound” button and make sure it is checkmarked
  4. Optionally, turn on “Music” (this provides no strategic advantage)

My Experience (A Metric)

Theory and Miscellaneous

Why Not Cheat?

The Perfect Board

The Perfect Strategy

Random Board Generation

Word Censorship

Official Changelog

The following is taken from GamePigeon’s “Version History” section on the Apple App Store[12].

Changes pertaining to Word Hunt in particular are highlighted in yellow:

Version History

Not logged[13]:

March 9, 2017

“Basketball” is added

December 20, 2016

“Chess” is added

December 19, 2016

“Shuffleboard” is added

December 8, 2016

“Mancala” is added

September 28, 2016

“20 Questions” is added

References

[1] GamePigeon - Wikipedia

[2] https://gamepigeonapp.com/

[3] GamePigeon offers more ways to play – The Gillnetter

[4] GamePigeon - Trailer

[5] 128.4k in word bites!

[6]         Horizontal-focus: searching for words along the easier 8-wide reading axis

Vertical-focus: searching for words along the 9-wide vertical axis

Big-word-focus: aiming for fewer words with more letters

Clumping: bringing every block to be adjacent; allows for more possible double-words per move, decreases movement time and scores more smaller words

[7] GAMEPIGEON WORLD RECORD: 130.6k in 4x4 word hunt!

[8] Statistic found through Python data analysis using the dataset provided by the following repository: https://github.com/dwyl/english-words.git

[9] Tested using process-of-elimination method of the available dictionary options from the following website: Word Hunt (Game Pigeon) Solver

[10] Though 2021 is the latest edition of CSW, Word Hunt may still utilize the 2016 version from the launch of GamePigeon; derives from the Collins English Dictionary. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_Scrabble_Word)

[11] Tetris effect - Wikipedia

[12] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gamepigeon/id1124197642

[13] https://twitter.com/gamepigeonapp

[14] http://gamepigeonapp.com/presskit.html

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Scrabble_Players_Dictionary