Assorted thoughts and notes on Gridogram
The hidden quote has a different theme each day:
How do players enjoy their daily Gridogram?
⏱️ Some players go for speed. Frantically swiping as many short words as possible to corner the gold words in the alphabetical list, they then pounce on them.
🎏 Some players go for speed with a more methodical approach. They box in and find the first gold word in the alphabetical list, then move on to the second one, and so on... skipping any they can’t get quickly to come back to at the end.
🧘 Some players prefer a relaxed approach. They solve the grid in whatever time it takes, maybe doing something else at the same time, maybe putting the grid aside and coming back to it at different times during the day.
🎯 Some players go for accuracy. They solve the Gridogram using a minimum number of words, by analysing the grid letters, the position of the gold words in the alphabetical list, and the quote placeholders.
🕵🏻 Some players like to keep finding words after solving the daily quote. Some target getting half of all available words every day. The most words ever found is 500 (Gridogram 2025-08-09, out of a possible 579). Sometimes all the words are found! The record is all 394 words being found in Gridogram 2025-08-31.
Gridogram does not have a built-in mechanism to rank players. This would
mean players having to set up accounts, which shouldn't be necessary for
a fun casual daily game. Players can however see a graph of how their
anonymous stats compare to the rest of the world:
Beyond that, the way players can compete is with friends, by sharing in
a group chat how they did on the daily grid:
This seems to work well when sharing in WhatsApp group chats, emails, and online forums. Some people compete on speed, others on accuracy — no metric is paramount. And some folk don't care much for competing, but do occasionally share their thoughts on the quote.
It's naturally possible to get an impressive result by doing the daily Gridogram on one device, and then doing the same quote again on another... But therein lies no glory.
How are Gridogram quotes selected?
When a player discovers the hidden quote, it should make them smile, think, remember or feel something.
Some quotes are well-known, some more obscure. But the preference is for well-known ones. Players get a warm glow from recognising a quote early and solving the grid more easily, that’s a good thing.
Preference is for quotes without proper nouns, but they can feature in well-known quotes.
If a quote is too lengthy, it can’t go in a Gridogram. The aim is to keep grids at max 5x4 letters, but occasionally a quote that requires a more challenging 5x5 grid makes the cut.
Common misquotations are avoided. Darth Vader said “No, I am your father”, not “Luke, I am your father”. Sometimes primary sources can be fun to check.
A substantial effort is made to ensure quotes are attributed to an
original source. A Gridogram with the lines
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can!
would cite
Thinking by Walter D. Wintle. Derivatives like “Sooner or later, those who win are those who think
they can”, with different attributions, are avoided.
Quotes only use words a majority of people will recognise. Which rules out much of Robert Burns, and that is just a shame. Gridogram will have no “Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie”. 🐁
When alternative spellings are possible, quotes stick to their
origin.
🇬🇧 Quotes originally in British English or said by a
British person use British spelling.
🇺🇸 Quotes originally in
American English or said by an American use American spelling.
Bridges are crossed as they are encountered... The Steve Irwin 🇦🇺 Gridogram didn’t have any ambiguous spelling!
The Gridogram wordlist includes common and uncommon English words, with both American and British English spellings.
Part of the fun can be discovering new words: which did you miss in the grid? So the wordlist requires some curation. Seeing you missed a word nobody’s uttered in the last century isn’t very interesting.
What is a valid word in Gridogram world?
The original English words came from the open-source Wordnik Wordlist. As new Gridograms are created, any missing words are added to the list (e.g. “gilets”), and words with no valid definitions on Wiktionary are removed (e.g. “compt”). As of writing there are 191,557 valid words.
What do you mean by “valid definition”?
Each word has an entry on Wiktionary. A word is excluded if all its English definitions are labelled as one of:
Those are the general principles established so far, aiming to create a modern international English wordlist. There will naturally be exceptions, like if a quote uses a contraction, that contraction has to be an accepted word. After all, international phenomenon Rick Astley can’t be quoted without “gonna”.
contact@gridogram.com