Assorted thoughts and notes on Gridogram
How do players enjoy their daily Gridogram?
I’ve seen a few different takes in the wild: speed, accuracy, finding many words...
🏁 Some players go for speed. They frantically swipe as many short words as possible to corner the gold words in the alphabetical list, and then pounce on them.
🎏 Some players go for speed with a more methodological 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... There’s been a couple requests for a “relax” mode, with no stats.
🎯 Some players go for accuracy. They solve the Gridogram using a minimum number of words, by analysing the grid letters, the emojis, the position of the gold words in the alphabetical list, the quote placeholders, and position of words in the quote as these are found. Even in hard mode, 100% accuracy is hit an impressively often.
🕵🏻 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 582). Sometimes all the words are found! Most recently all 199 words were found in Gridogram 2025-08-10, but the record as of writing is all 291 words being found in a Gridogram.
Gridogram has 3 difficulty levels, allowing players to choose the level
of challenge that feels right. Roughly:
64% players play on normal mode,
20% play on hard 🤘 mode, and
16% play on easy 😎 mode (including players who start a grid on a more
difficult mode and then switch to easy).
How are Gridogram quotes selected?
When a player discovers the hidden daily quote, it should make them smile, think, 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.
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.
Certain players like to find words beyond what’s in the quote. Someone once found a staggering 458 words in a grid! When there are fewer available words, occasionally all have been found. The record so far: one player found all 281 available words in Gridogram 2025-05-17.
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 192,808 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”.
