How to Play Word Hunt: Rules, Scoring & Timer
Word Hunt is the word game inside GamePigeon, played over iMessage. You and an opponent get the same 4×4 grid of letters and 80 seconds each to find as many words as possible. Higher total score wins.
The rules
- Swipe across adjacent letters to spell a word. Letters connect horizontally, vertically, or diagonally — all 8 directions.
- Each tile can be used once per word. You can reuse tiles freely across different words.
- Words must be at least 3 letters long.
- There's no penalty for trying an invalid word — swipe anything that might be a word.
- The same word only counts once, but different words using the same tiles all count (anagrams are free points).
Scoring table
| Word length | Points |
|---|---|
| 3 letters | 100 |
| 4 letters | 400 |
| 5 letters | 800 |
| 6 letters | 1,400 |
| 7 letters | 1,800 |
| 8 letters | 2,200 |
| each letter beyond 8 | +400 |
Note the jump from 3 to 4 letters: a 4-letter word is worth four times a 3-letter word. That one fact drives most good strategy — see our Word Hunt tips for how to use it.
Which words count?
Word Hunt validates words against Collins Scrabble Words, a larger dictionary than the North American Scrabble list. That's why unusual words like TAE, OES, or AIT are accepted. If a word you swiped wasn't counted, it's almost always one of two reasons: the word isn't in Collins, or two of its letters weren't actually touching on the grid.
The timer
Each player gets 80 seconds. Both players play the same board, so the game is purely about who extracts more from identical letters — there's no luck difference between you and your opponent.
Practice before your next match
WordScouts is a free solo version of Word Hunt with the same rules, timer, scoring table, and Collins dictionary. After each round it shows every word the board contained, so you can see exactly what you missed. There's also an untimed mode for building board vision without the clock.