Beat the tide
Every wave rolls in fast. Spell a word and buy yourself a few more seconds before the sea takes your tiles.
Bonus & wild tiles
Grab life and time bonuses, and play wildcard tiles as any letter to land your biggest word yet.
Daily challenge
The same puzzle for everyone each day. Build a streak, then share a spoiler-free score with friends.
What is Tidewords?
Tidewords is a free mobile word game with a tide. Letter tiles wash up on the sand and you spell words with them before the next wave rolls in and takes them back. Every word you land holds the sea off a few seconds longer, so a round is a race between how fast you can read the sand and how fast the water is rising.
It plays in portrait with one thumb, in rounds of a couple of minutes. Bonus tiles top your time and your lives back up, wildcard tiles stand in for any letter, and the daily challenge deals every player the same letters so a shared score means the same thing for everyone. There are no ads, no accounts and no sign-up, and your progress stays on your own device. Read our privacy policy for the details.
Get Tidewords free on iPhone, iPad or Android, or read how the game handles your data first.
How to play Tidewords
A round is a chain of waves. Each wave gives you a rack of letters and asks for a set number of words before the sea reaches the top of the beach. You have three lives.
- Pull letters from the sand Tap tiles to build a word and tap again to put one back. Every wave is seeded with at least one common five-letter word, so a rack is never a dead end.
- Bank the word before the wave lands A valid word scores and pushes the tide back out. Longer words buy more time, so a six-letter find is worth far more than two short ones.
- Clear the wave's quota Later waves ask for more than one word. Because each word you bank refills the tide, the quota is a chain: the first word buys you the time to find the second. Clear it and the sea rolls straight back out.
- Spend the bonus and wildcard tiles Life and time bonuses start washing up from wave seven, and wildcard tiles from wave eight. A wildcard plays as any letter and resolves to the best word you could have spelled with it.
If you would rather not race a clock, Relaxed mode drives the tide by moves instead of time: it creeps in on every submission and goes back out on every valid word, so the skill is efficiency rather than speed. A tutorial walks you through the first wave.