A puzzle solver is the right tool for a different problem than an answer page. An answer page tells you today's solution. A solver takes *your* board — the Wordle pattern you're stuck on, the Queens grid from a friend's screenshot, a Spelling Bee hive from last Tuesday — and works it out. HintSheet has six, all running entirely in your browser, nothing uploaded, no sign-up.
Each solver is built around how the game actually constrains the answer. The Wordle solver doesn't just filter — it ranks the remaining candidates by how much each would tell you next. The Queens solver enforces the no-touching rule that makes the puzzle. The Connections helper deliberately *doesn't* solve anything: it points at the letter patterns purple groups are built from and lets you decide.
The solvers are also the reason HintSheet's Dle and LinkedIn coverage doesn't need playable clones. If you want to play, the games are one link away on every guide; if you want to check your work, the tools are here.
Every solver
What each solver does
In the order people use them most.
- Wordle solver — enter each guess, set the tile colours, and get the possible answers ranked by information value. Handles repeated letters correctly.
- Spelling Bee solver — centre letter plus six outer letters in, every valid word grouped by length out, pangrams marked, points totalled.
- Queens solver — paint the colour regions of any LinkedIn Queens board, 5×5 to 11×11, and get the crown placement.
- Tango solver — tap in the given suns and moons and the = and × signs; the 6×6 completes itself.
- Zip solver — place the numbers in order, add walls, and see the one path that fills every cell.
- Connections helper — paste sixteen words and see shared endings, hidden words, anagram pairs and other structural patterns. It never groups the words for you.
How they're built, and why that matters
All six are small pieces of JavaScript that run on your device. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, which matters more than it sounds: several popular solver sites log every board entered and use it to publish answers. The word lists for the Wordle and Spelling Bee solvers come from a public-domain English dictionary, filtered and split so a page only loads what it needs — the Bee solver downloads only the words containing your centre letter.
The logic solvers (Queens, Tango, Zip) use plain backtracking with the game's own constraints. On the board sizes LinkedIn uses that finishes in milliseconds; the largest Zip boards can take a second or two. Each returns "no solution" rather than a wrong grid when the entered board is inconsistent — usually one mis-painted cell or a misplaced wall.
Using a solver without ruining the game
The honest use of a solver is *after* you've tried. Use the Wordle solver to see what a better third guess would have been, not to skip guessing. Use the Queens solver when a Sunday board has beaten you and you want to see which deduction you missed — the Queens guide names the four moves so you can find it. Use the Connections helper when you're down to eight words and the meanings don't cohere.
If you want to avoid spoilers entirely, the hint pages — Connections, Wordle, Strands — are staged so you see only what you ask for.
Solvers that aren't here, and why
There's no Strands solver because Strands is a search of a fixed board that the game's own hint system already assists, and a solver would just be the answer page. There's no Pinpoint or Crossclimb solver because the puzzle *is* the trivia. There's no Mini Sudoku solver yet; the 6×6 falls to the three techniques on its guide and a solver would be idle. Patches and Wend solvers may follow as those games settle.
Accuracy, and the honest limits
The logic solvers are exact: given a correctly entered board, Queens, Tango and Zip return the unique solution or say there isn't one. The word solvers are only as good as their list, which is a broad public-domain dictionary rather than the Times' curated one — so the Wordle solver will occasionally rank an obscure word highly and the Bee solver will list a word the game rejects. The Connections helper makes no claims at all; it surfaces patterns and leaves the judgement to you.
If a solver gives a result that's wrong for a board you've entered correctly, the contact page reaches the editor and the fix ships the same day.
Reader questions about the solvers
"Does the Wordle solver know today's word?" No. It filters by your colours only.
"Can the Queens solver read a screenshot?" Not yet. Paint the regions by hand — it takes about a minute.
"Why is the Bee list different from the game's?" The Times' list is private and curated; ours is computed.
"Will there be a Strands or Pinpoint solver?" Probably not — see the section above on why.
A short guide to each solver's inputs
The thirty seconds that save five minutes.
- Wordle — type the guess, tap tiles to cycle grey → yellow → green, add. Enter the guesses in the order you played them.
- Spelling Bee — one centre letter, six outer letters; order doesn't matter; the list loads when the centre is entered.
- Queens — choose size first, then paint. Each region one colour; every cell painted; as many regions as rows.
- Tango — cells cycle empty → sun → moon; switch to = or × and tap the circle between two cells for a sign.
- Zip — tap cells in order for 1, 2, 3…; switch to Walls and tap a border to block it.
- Connections helper — paste all sixteen words; read the patterns; decide.
How the Wordle solver ranks, in detail
After filtering by your feedback, the solver builds two frequency tables from the surviving candidates: how often each letter appears in each of the five positions, and how many candidates contain each letter at all. Each candidate is then scored by summing its letters' positional frequencies plus twice their overall frequencies, counting each distinct letter once so that repeated letters don't inflate the score. The top of the list is the candidate whose letters are most common among what's left — which, as a next guess, is the one most likely to split the remaining set. It's a lightweight relative of the expected-information calculation WordleBot uses, and on the Times' answer list it agrees with WordleBot's top pick most of the time.
What it doesn't do: recommend non-candidate test words. In normal mode with a large candidate list, a word that can't be the answer but tests five fresh letters can be a better move. The guide explains when; the solver stays a candidate ranker so that it's always valid in hard mode.
How the logic solvers search
Queens places one crown per row, trying columns left to right and rejecting any that share a column or region with a placed crown or touch the previous row's crown diagonally; it backtracks when a row has no legal cell. Tango fills empty cells in reading order, trying sun then moon, and checks the two affected lines and every constraint after each placement. Zip walks from the first number, extending the path to any unvisited neighbour not blocked by a wall, enforcing the numbered order as it passes each numbered cell, and accepting only when every cell is visited and the last number reached. All three are exhaustive, so 'no solution' means the entered board has none.
Reader questions, second round
"Why does the Zip solver take a few seconds on 8×8?" Few numbers means many possible paths; it's searching them all.
"Can I share a solved board?" The share buttons under each result post a link; the board itself isn't encoded in it.
"Do the solvers work offline?" Once a page and its word list have loaded, yes.
A word on the Connections helper's limits
The helper finds structural patterns — letters, not meanings — so it is strong on purple groups built from hidden words, shared affixes and anagrams, and silent on groups built from meaning: things that precede a word, famous people, homophones of a set. That's deliberate; a meaning-based helper would need to know the answer, and this one doesn't. When it lights nothing up, read the board for meaning, and if you're still stuck, the hint page stages the nudge you need.
Privacy, restated
Because solvers are the part of a puzzle site most likely to collect data — every board you enter is, after all, a puzzle someone else might want — it's worth saying again in plain terms: nothing you type into any HintSheet solver leaves your browser. The word lists are static files; the logic runs on your device; there is no request made when you press Solve. The only network activity is loading the page and, for the word solvers, the word-list file for your centre letter. That is verifiable in any browser's network panel, and the privacy policy commits to it.
Requests and roadmap
Solvers get built when a game has a board that people genuinely need help entering — which is why Queens, Tango and Zip exist and Pinpoint doesn't. Requests through the contact page are logged. Likely next: a Mini Sudoku solver if the weekend boards keep getting harder, and a Patches solver once the game's clue formats settle. A screenshot reader for Queens boards is the most-requested feature and the least likely soon; painting nine regions by hand takes a minute, and a reader that gets one cell wrong is worse than none.
Keyboard and screen-reader use
Every solver is operable from the keyboard: Tab moves between controls, Space or Enter activates cells and buttons, and the tile-colour buttons on the Wordle solver announce their state. The board grids are SVG with text alternatives, and results are announced as plain text below the board. If a control doesn't work with your assistive technology, the contact page reaches the editor and the fix ships in the next deploy; accessibility bugs are treated as corrections, not feature requests.
Why there's no account and no history
A solver that remembered your boards would need to store them somewhere, and storing them is the thing this site has promised not to do. So there is no login, no saved history and no cross-device sync. If you want to keep a board, the share link carries the page, not the board — screenshot it. The trade-off is deliberate: the solvers are small, fast, private tools, and the moment they became a product with accounts they would stop being any of those.
Frequently asked questions
Are the solvers free?
Yes. No account, no limits.
Is anything I enter uploaded?
No. Every solver runs in your browser.
Why does the Wordle solver list a word I've never heard of?
The list is a broad public-domain dictionary. Prefer the common word when two are close.
Does the Queens solver work on any size?
5×5 through 11×11 — every size LinkedIn uses and then some.