Seek & Sail

What is Seek & Sail?

Seek & Sail is a word search you play online. Each grid has a theme, like Ocean Life, Bakery, Camping or Gemstones, and a list of words to find. The words are hidden in straight lines among random letters. Find them all and your boat sails on to the next island.

There are 68 themes and ten seas to explore, from Coral Cove and Pine Fjord to Starlit Lagoon and Rainbow Strait. It's free and plays in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, no download needed.

How to play

The word list sits at the top of the screen. Find a word in the grid and mark it from its first letter to its last. If it's on the list, it gets circled in color and crossed off. If not, the selection just clears.

Words always run in a straight line: across, down or diagonally. As you get further into the Voyage, they start running backward and upward too.

Controls

• Drag from the first letter of a word to the last. The selection snaps to straight lines, so you don't have to be precise.
• Or tap twice: tap the first letter, then tap the last. Handy on small phones.
• Computer keyboard: arrow keys move a cursor around the grid. Press Enter or Space on the first letter, move to the last letter, and press it again. H uses a spyglass and Esc pauses.

Modes

Voyage

The main game. Each voyage is one themed grid, and every five voyages complete a sea. Finishing a sea gives you its postcard. After all ten seas you keep sailing into second visits (Coral Cove II and so on) with harder grids. Your progress saves automatically.

Daily Sea

One grid for everyone each day: 9 words on a 10 by 10 grid, with words running in all eight directions. It's timed. You start at 2,000 points and lose 3 for every second and 150 for every spyglass you use, with a floor of 100. The Daily Sea changes at midnight UTC and keeps your day streak going.

Rush

Ninety seconds on the clock and a stream of small 8 by 8 boards. Each word scores 10 points per letter and adds 2 seconds to the clock. Find words in a row without a wrong selection and your multiplier climbs: double points from the third word in a streak, triple from the sixth. Clearing a whole board adds 50 points and 5 more seconds, then a fresh board drops in. A wrong selection resets your multiplier. There are no spyglasses in Rush.

Spyglasses, boats and postcards

A spyglass puts a glowing ring on the first letter of a word you haven't found. You start with 3, get a bonus one every third voyage, and can carry up to 9.

Every word you find, in any mode, counts toward new boats for your Logbook. You start in the Dinghy, then unlock the Sunny Sloop at 40 words, Mint Ketch at 100, Berry Schooner at 180, Night Clipper at 300, Rainbow Cat at 450 and the Golden Galleon at 650. Postcards from each sea you chart go in the Logbook too.

Signed-in players can post Daily Sea and Rush scores to the leaderboards.

Word search tips

• Hunt for the rare letters. Pick a word with a J, Q, X, Z, K or W and scan the grid for just that letter. There are usually only one or two of them, so you'll find the word fast.
• Look for doubles. Words with a double letter (the LL in SHELL, the OO in BALLOON) stand out, because two identical letters side by side in a line are less common in the filler.
• Scan one direction at a time. Sweep every row left to right for a word's first two letters, then every column, then the diagonals. It's slower per pass but you won't keep looking at the same spot.
• Find the long words first. Long words have more letters to spot, and once they're circled the grid gets less crowded for the short ones.
• Remember backward words. From voyage 21 on, and always in the Daily Sea, a word can run right to left or bottom to top. If you're stuck on a word, look for its last letter followed by its second to last.
• In Rush, only drag when you're sure. A wrong selection resets your multiplier. Grab the easy words first and only come back for the tricky one if time allows, since clearing the board is worth 50 points and 5 seconds.
• Save spyglasses for the Voyage. In the Daily Sea each one costs 150 points, the same as 50 seconds of searching.

Want a different kind of letter grid? In Word Tumble you swipe through touching letters to spell your own words, and Sun Wheel asks how many words you can make from seven letters.

Questions