About Knot

What is Knot?

Knot is a 4x4 word grouping puzzle. Sixteen words, four hidden categories of four each. Spot the groups, tie them off, one knot at a time.

It's inspired by NYT Connections but built to correct what we found frustrating: culturally neutral categories, soft-fail strikes so a rough day doesn't end the puzzle, and endless unlimited play instead of a single daily. Opt in to tighter difficulty when you're ready.

How it works

1. Pick four words that you think share a hidden category.
2. Submit your guess. Correct groups stack at the top in their difficulty colour.
3. Keep trying. Four wrong guesses reveal the easiest remaining group - soft-fail, not game-over.
4. Tie the knot when all four groups are solved, then share your result.

Fair misdirection, by design

Knot puzzles are generated and validated offline by an engine that explicitly prefers candidate words which ALSO fuzzy-match a different category - so near-misses are engineered into every puzzle, not left to chance. A misdirection scorer rejects puzzles that don't clear a minimum trickery threshold, so every 16-word grid is designed to make you second-guess yourself at least once.

Solo or together

Play solo out of the box - no account needed. If you'd rather share the daily with a friend, sign in and open a Knot room: you'll see the same puzzle, chat inline, and mark up words with shared colours and theories as you go.

Privacy

Solo play collects nothing - locale, difficulty, and solved puzzle IDs stay in your browser's localStorage. Rooms use Lotl Auth for sign-in and store chat + marks in a hosted database. Full details on the privacy policy page.