Squaredle Glossary: 15 Terms Every Player Should Know

Squaredle has its own small vocabulary of terms that show up in the game and in guides like this one. Here’s a quick reference.

Grid & Board Terms

Grid — The board of letters for the day’s puzzle. Comes in three shapes: 4×4, 5×5 cross, and 5×5 corners.

Tile — A single letter cell on the grid.

Cleared tile — A tile that fades out because every word using it has already been found.

Cleared board / cleared puzzle — The state when every tile has been cleared — the puzzle is fully solved.

Adjacent tiles — Two tiles that touch, including diagonally. Squaredle connections work in all eight directions, not just up/down/left/right. See our full rules guide for details.

Path — The specific sequence of tiles a word traces across the grid. Some words have more than one possible path if the same letters repeat nearby.

Word Terms

Required word — A word that’s part of the puzzle’s core solution; finding all required words is what “solving” the puzzle means.

Bonus word (optional word) — A valid word that isn’t required to finish the puzzle, usually rarer or more obscure. See our scoring and bonus words guide.

Bonus Word of the Day — Informal term players use for the single most unusual or memorable bonus word in a given day’s puzzle.

Dictionary Terms

NWL2023 — The official word list Squaredle checks words against, maintained by NASPA for competitive Scrabble. See our dictionary explainer.

NASPA — The North American Scrabble Players Association, the organization that maintains NWL2023.

Scoring Terms

Score / points — Numeric value earned per word found; longer words earn more.

Perk / milestone — A hint feature (like a tile’s word-count indicator) that unlocks once your score crosses a threshold.

Mode Terms

Express — A smaller, faster daily puzzle offered alongside the standard grid. See our Express mode guide.

Streak — Consecutive days a player has completed the puzzle, tracked as a personal stat.

Bonus Term: “Solver”

Solver — A tool (like this site) that computes every valid word a given grid contains, typically by systematically trying every possible path and checking each resulting string against a dictionary such as NWL2023. Useful for double-checking a tricky find or visualizing the exact path behind a word you already spotted.