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Paw Path, the daily cat word puzzle
Rusty is a ginger cat who wants to get to his bed. Between him and a nap there is a path of stones, one stone for each letter in today's rack. Spell a word from the rack and Rusty walks that many stones. Use every letter and he reaches his bed.
Everyone gets the same letters each day. Every word must be three letters or longer, and each letter can be used only once. It takes about three minutes, has no timer, and you can play with one thumb on a phone or the keyboard on a computer. Three stars means a clean walk: at most three slips, where a hint counts as three.
Yesterday's Paw Path and the last 7 days
How to play
- Tap the letter tiles to spell a word, or type on your keyboard. Tap a letter in the word row (or press Backspace) to take it back.
- Press Go, or Enter. If Rusty knows the word, he walks one stone for every letter and those letters are used up. Words must be at least three letters.
- Use every letter. Your words can be anything Rusty knows, and the same word can be used twice if the letters allow, so a rack usually has several ways home. If the letters left over cannot make words, Rusty says he is stuck. Tap Undo to take back the last word, which is free in that case.
- Stuck for a word? A hint lights up the letters of a word that leads home. A second hint on the same step adds its first letter, and a third shows the whole word. Show the way ends the puzzle and reveals one route, with no stars.
- Stars: you start with three. A slip is a word Rusty does not know, or a word you took back with Undo. A hint counts as three slips. Up to three slips keeps three stars, so one hint and no slips still keeps three. Up to eight slips keeps two, and after that you get one. Giving up gives none.
Tips
- Look for the common endings first: ING, ED, ER, S and Y use up letters quickly and leave a smaller rack to solve.
- Start with the rarest letters, like J, K, Q, X, W and Z, and the letters that appear twice. They have the fewest places to go.
- Try the short words last. A three-letter word is easy to find at the end, but spending its letters early can leave the rest with no way home.
- If the rack looks hopeless, shuffle it. Moving the tiles around often shows a word you could not see before.
- Every puzzle is built from two or three everyday words, like things in a house or a garden, so think of objects you could picture.
A worked example: puzzle #1, October 28, 2026
The rack for puzzle #1 was C I S H A A C H R N, ten letters, so ten stones. One way home is CHAIN and then CRASH: C, H, A, I, N uses five letters and leaves S, A, C, H, R, which spell CRASH.
Other routes exist too. The solver found dozens of ways to split these ten letters into words, and any of them walks Rusty to his bed. The only rule is that every letter gets used.
A common mistake
Using up a long word that sounds right but leaves the leftover letters with no way to make words. If Rusty says he is stuck, Undo is free, so take the word back and try a different split. The puzzle never needs a word you could not find: every day was solved by a computer before it went out.
How Paw Path differs
Most word-rack games ask you to find as many words as you can. In Paw Path you must use every letter exactly once, so the puzzle is about how you split the letters between words, not how many words you know. Rusty only accepts a list of everyday words with swearing, sexual and drug words filtered out, which is meant to keep the game family friendly.
Questions
How do I play Paw Path?
Spell words of three or more letters from the rack. Every letter you use moves Rusty one stone along the path. When all the letters are used in words, Rusty reaches his bed and you win.
Is it the same puzzle for everyone?
Yes. The letters are the same for everyone on the same New York calendar day, and a new puzzle starts at midnight in New York. Every puzzle is made ahead of time, so you can always play the archive too.
Can every puzzle be solved?
Yes. Each puzzle is built from two or three real words that are shuffled together, and a solver checks the rack before it is published. There is always at least one way to use every letter, and usually dozens.
How are the stars worked out?
You start with three stars. A slip is a word Rusty does not know, or a word you take back with Undo (Undo is free if Rusty is stuck). A hint counts as three slips. Up to three slips keeps three stars, up to eight keeps two, and after that you get one. Giving up gives none.
Which words does Rusty know?
A list of about 38,700 everyday English words from three to eight letters, plus a few modern ones like app, email and emoji. We filtered out swearing and slurs, sexual and body-function words, drug, alcohol and gambling words, weapon words and words about killing, and hints only offer common everyday words. No list this big is perfect, so a rude word may still slip through. A real but rare word may also be missing, and then Rusty will not know it.
What does Rusty say when he is stuck?
It means the letters left over cannot be split into words of three or more letters, however you try. Tap Undo to take the last word back. That Undo does not cost a slip.
Do I need an account?
No. Your streak, stars and saved progress stay in your browser. Finish the daily puzzle to add a day to your streak. You get one free freeze each week.
Can I play old puzzles?
Yes. The archive has every past daily puzzle. Archive puzzles do not count toward your streak.
Who is Rusty?
Rusty is the ginger cat from Cozy Cat Home, another free Brainiac Play game, where you win a puzzle and decorate a pastel house for him and his friends.
Can I play on a phone with one hand?
Yes. The letter tiles, Go, Delete and Shuffle sit at the bottom of the screen, within reach of one thumb. On a computer you can type the letters, press Enter to go, Backspace to take a letter back, and Space to shuffle.
More cozy games · SCRAMBLE, the daily anagram · Cozy Cat Home