7 Little Words, also known as 7 Little Words: Word Puzzles, gives its players seven little words (who would’ve thought) to solve every day. It’s a bit of a brain-bender, but we can’t get enough of it.
What Is 7 Little Words?
7 Little Words is a daily word game, but unlike Wordle and other similar games, it isn’t about piecing together individual letters. Instead, it’s about putting together parts of words. Many words share letters (despite meaning completely different things) and 7 Little Words turns that concept into a daily puzzle.
Who Created 7 Little Words?
7 Little Words was created by Maine-based Blue Ox Family Games, Inc., a mobile phone game developer specializing in games for children and families.
Although the game is often compared to Wordle because it’s a daily word game, it originally debuted in May of 2011. It became increasingly popular a year and a half after its release, gaining over 6 million downloads on the App Store. The team at Blue Ox has since expanded the game into multiple regions and languages, and has made a simplified version to help children learn phonetic spellings as well as a more gamified version called 7 Little Words Adventures.
The game experienced a resurgence (similar to Wordle) at the beginning of 2022 and has gained interest since. Five daily puzzles are available on the 7 Little Words mobile app, which can be found on the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and Amazon App Store, with one of the five playable daily on 7littlewords.com.
There are also paperback books containing 7 Little Words puzzles for offline play, and printable classroom packs available on the game’s website to be used as a teaching tool.
How To Play 7 Little Words
Each day, the 7 Little Words game gives all players one daily puzzle to complete with the same clues as well as 7 Little Words bonus puzzles to complete for fun. The clues for the hidden words in each daily 7 Little Words puzzle are akin to crossword puzzle prompts such as:
“vehicle seen after blizzards”
meaning “snowplow”
“office processes, broadly,” meaning workflow
Players are given seven clues and 20 pieces (or parts of words) to work with. These pieces could be entire words that get combined into compound words like “work” and “flow,” or they can be abstract slices from the beginning, middle, or end of a term that cannot stand on their own, like “sn,” “owpl,” and “ow.”
To piece together the words, the player clicks or taps on one of the word parts, adding it to a bar underneath the clues.
The player can then tap another word part to add it to the end of the already placed part.
If the player places parts to form a word, and that word is one of the daily hidden words, it will automatically trigger the prompt to be solved and crossed out. Any bits of words successfully used to solve a clue will be eliminated from the board, as each part can only be used once. As the parts of words are eliminated, subsequent hidden words become easier to solve.
The Goal of the 7 Little Words Game
The goal of 7 Little Words is to solve all seven-word prompts by piecing together the 20 pieces of words. There is no time limit or limited number of attempts, and the prompts can be completed in any order.
While the pieces “awk” and “ward” might jump out to some without even reading the clues, other prompts require players to use up to three word portions like “wher,” “ewi,” and “thal” (spelling wherewithal), which makes the pairing of the word pieces a little bit harder.
It’s important to remember that the word parts must be selected correctly to solve the prompts. For example, choosing “do,” “ts,” and “nu” will not automatically spell out donuts. The parts have to be placed in the correct order to spell the word.
7 Little Words Tips and Strategies
7 Little Words is supposed to be a fun, relaxing way to exercise your mind through puzzle-solving — and the lack of a timer or imminent loss reinforces this.
But, if you are the type of player who likes to get competitive, time yourself, or compare results with friends, then here are some tips to up your 7 Little Words strategy.
Skip the Clues
The clues are your best bet for solving the hidden words, but sometimes words jump out at you before you even read the hints.
If you see two parts of a word right next to each other that spell a word, tap them and see if it solves a clue.
You can quickly try to piece the parts together to spell whole words that you naturally see, but don’t linger on this step if your first guess isn’t right because the words in the puzzle are purposely chosen because they are spelled similarly.
Give the Clues a Once-over
Quickly read all clues to see if any of them seem obvious to you.
Everyone can solve different clues more easily because of their education, experience, trivia knowledge, etc. So, if any of them only have one obvious answer, go for it — because you might just be right.
Go Clue by Clue
After eliminating some clues and word pieces, the remaining clues should become more straightforward or obvious since fewer are remaining.
Try to find synonyms for the words that come to mind. And if that doesn’t work give the word you think it might be a YourDictionary search and see what else comes up with those letters (although some will consider this cheating).
Go Part by Part
If you’re struggling with one of the clues or can’t think of synonyms, try looking at the pieces and comparing them.
If you know one of them is a common prefix, suffix, or root word that could be combined with others, try matching it with every other part one-by-one until something lines up as a word or jogs your memory for one of the clues.
Trial and Error
There are over 1,000,000 combinations in any game of 7 Little Words. But, if you’ve cleared quite a few clues off the board (leaving between four and six word pieces left for use) you might be able to piece the remainders together through trial and error.
The best way to go about this is to tap one word part and try to combine it with one of the others until one of them works or you run out. Keep doing this until you solve the remaining clues or until one of the combinations opens your eyes to an answer.
Ask for a Hint
7 Little Words is a fun, simple way to test your brain, but it was never meant to be a competitive eSport, so remember to have fun. If you get stuck, there’s no harm in asking for a hint.
To request a suggestion, tap the “hint” button, which looks like a lightbulb located near the clues.
Give Up
It’s okay to throw in the towel. If you can’t figure out the 7 Little Words answers today, it doesn’t mean you’re bad at the game or can’t get it tomorrow. Keep at it — one day, you’ll be a 7 Little Words pro.
How To Win at 7 Little Words
Once you use our tips and tricks as well as the guiding goals we mentioned above, it’s not too hard to win 7 Little Words (considering there are unlimited amounts of guesses you can play each day). Just keep narrowing down your word piece options until you find 7 words that work. Soon, with a little practice, you’ll get quicker at spotting possible word combinations and piecing them together.
However, if you’re feeling stuck, it never hurts to try a word unscrambler to help you make sense of those different word parts. WordFinder is made to help people reduce frustration and enjoy word games by learning new words easily and quickly. And if our word finder tool isn’t something you need right at this very moment, we also offer word lists full of power plays to take your word game skills to the next level. That’s right: These carefully-curated word lists can help you find winning words and prepare for the challenges ahead. You’ll always have just the right word to play at the just the right moment.
