How Letter Boxed works
The New York Times' Letter Boxed presents 12 letters on the four sides of a square — three letters per side. To play, you spell a word by moving from letter to letter, never using two consecutive letters from the same side. Your next word must start on the letter your previous word ended with. The goal is to use every one of the 12 letters in the shortest chain of valid words.
Each daily puzzle displays a suggested target word count. Try to meet or beat that target; two-word solutions are an additional challenge that Letter Boxed communities often chase.
Chaining strategy
The best Letter Boxed solutions revolve around one long word that eats 8+ of the 12 letters. Once you find that word, the remaining 3–4 letters usually only need one or two more words to close the chain.
- Find the longest word first. Longer words dramatically reduce the letters you still need to place.
- Track leftover letters. After your longest word, note which of the 12 letters aren't yet used.
- Chain from the last letter. Your second word must start with the letter your first ended on.
- Cover the remaining letters in the second (and, if needed, third) word.
Common Letter Boxed openers
Long words that repeatedly appear in NYT Letter Boxed solutions:
- SUBSTITUTE, PARENTHOOD, WATERMELON — for boards with common vowel + consonant coverage.
- PSYCHIATRY, DIPLOMATIC, BUTTERSCOTCH — heavy consonant boards.
- QUINCE, QUAINT, EQUITABLE — for the rare Q board.
- KAYAK, LULLABY — for double-letter boards (rare, since Letter Boxed uses 12 unique letters).
Longer opening words can cover more of the board's letters — when the solver returns a 10+ letter word from your set, that's usually your best candidate to open with.
The side-switching rule
Before typing any word into the NYT app, trace it: each consecutive letter must come from a different side of the square. That kills a lot of promising-looking words — e.g. if H, E, L are all on the same side, HELP is invalid because H→E→L breaks the rule twice.
The solver returns every dictionary word your letter set makes. Trace each candidate on the actual board layout before submitting.
Related
FAQs
What is Letter Boxed?
Letter Boxed is the New York Times daily puzzle: 12 unique letters arranged on the four sides of a square (three per side). You form words by moving between sides — two consecutive letters cannot come from the same side — and you must use every letter in as few words as possible. Each new word starts with the letter your previous word ended on.
Is this tool a full Letter Boxed solver?
No — it's a letter-pool helper. It returns every English word that uses only your 12 letters, but it doesn't know which letters are on which side, so it cannot enforce the 'no two consecutive letters from the same side' rule or the chain rule. You still need to trace each candidate on your board.
How do I chain words to hit the target?
Each new word must begin with the letter your previous word ended on. The puzzle also gives a target word count — usually 4 or 5 — for a 'perfect' solve.
Can a letter repeat inside a word?
Yes. Letter Boxed boards contain 12 unique letters, but the same letter can be reused within a word — the only constraint is that consecutive letters cannot come from the same side. So a word like APPLE is allowed by the letter-reuse rule (the same P is used twice); whether it's playable depends on whether P and the neighbouring letters sit on different sides on your specific board.
Is there a shorter-solution version?
The community-favourite 'two-word' Letter Boxed solves find a pair of words that together use all 12 letters and chain. That's a harder problem than what this helper tackles single-word.