- 24 Jan, 2026 *
I’ve always enjoyed a word puzzle. For many years I have been playing Words With Friends with a few of my chums. We’re not seriously competitive, but we enjoy the game; it’s a nice distraction from life.
Similarly, when Wordle came along I was instantly hooked. Josh Wardle created a prototype several years earlier, but eventually released Wordle in October 2021; the result of a project he completed during Covid for his partner.
It quickly exploded to 300,000 players within three months. Popularity, and clones appeared, and he grew tired of the attention. In 2023 he sold out to the New York Times for a seven figure wad of cash. There are now 2+ million players!
There have been hundreds of clones, and many attempts at the next big thing without much success.…
- 24 Jan, 2026 *
I’ve always enjoyed a word puzzle. For many years I have been playing Words With Friends with a few of my chums. We’re not seriously competitive, but we enjoy the game; it’s a nice distraction from life.
Similarly, when Wordle came along I was instantly hooked. Josh Wardle created a prototype several years earlier, but eventually released Wordle in October 2021; the result of a project he completed during Covid for his partner.
It quickly exploded to 300,000 players within three months. Popularity, and clones appeared, and he grew tired of the attention. In 2023 he sold out to the New York Times for a seven figure wad of cash. There are now 2+ million players!
There have been hundreds of clones, and many attempts at the next big thing without much success.
TiledWords
I now offer you TiledWords. It launched 19 October 2025, after a few teaser videos and demos — the creation of Paul Hebert.
Think Crossword, but with a twist — literally!
You’re presented with a board and a set of clues. No numbered positions; simply across and downs. The answers are all on the board, but split into two or three letter tiles, which can spin!
Read the clues; click the tiles to spin; drag them together to form the words. It’s that simple, but more importantly good clean fun. Paul and his wife handcraft all the puzzles.
There is of course the obligatory Share feature to copy and paste your results into your favourite social media; emulating the feature of Wordle which launched it into the hearts and competitiveness of many.
One Hundred
I’ve been playing it every day since launch, and today marks the 100th board to be played. It’s another moment of escapism each day in my daily routine.
I have a bit of a ritual: When I wake up I play Wordle to kick start the brain. I also do Connections (both now from the New York Times). I then share the results with a few friends.
I play Words with Friends a few times during the day, if others have made their move.
I always play TiledWords in the evening, in bed, as part of my wind down.
The Future
I’m not sure what the future is for TiledWords. Paul has already made some great additions in the last 100 days.
You can submit a clue to a future "Community" puzzle, where many people have set the clues. We have had a few of those. They are often tougher; over the period you get used to Paul’s way of constructing clues, so having randoms setting it can add a challenge.
He is also accepting "Custom Puzzles" where you set all the clues for the daily puzzle. We’ve not had any of those yet.
One of the stats the game retains is your streak. That is, the number of days in a row you have played and won. It adds a extra degree of competition, but like Wordle, once you break the streak it becomes less relevant to you.
Sadly, I broke my TiledWords streak when I solved the puzzle one night on my phone rather than tablet. There’s no login feature to track you (which I like) and it did mean that the tablet was unaware of my diversion to the mobile phone, so I lost my streak on the tablet.
In my head I know I have done all 100 days in a row — and solved them all — on one device or another.
I wish Paul (and his wife) much respect, and hopefully he continues to grow this entertaining puzzle. Maybe one day he will have a seven-figure success of his own?!
PS – You may have noticed that in order to write this blog post, I had to complete today’s TiledWords early! I now need to find something to fill that void in bed tonight for a few minutes 🤣
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