PuzzleParty: A Guide for New Users

This is the one thing that trips up every new user. PuzzleParty is not a puzzle app. Keep playing Wordle, Connections, Strands, the Mini, and the rest exactly where you already play them. PuzzleParty is where you bring the result.

Once a result is in, the app does what a group text never could:

• Builds a daily scoreboard for each group you're in
• Tracks streaks, stats, and trends over time
• Hides everyone else's result until you've played that puzzle yourself
• Carries what you entered to every party you're in

That last one is the part people feel. You enter your puzzle once, and it reaches everyone you play with — instead of sending the same result over and over to one group chat after another. It turns out to be a remarkably cheap way to stay in touch with a lot of people.

It is private by design. No public feed, no strangers, no algorithm — only people you've invited or been invited by.

There is also a character named Dot, the app's party animal, who watches the day's results and chimes in with encouragement, celebrations, and the occasional bit of snark.

One more thing before you start, because it makes everything else easier: it is safe to tap things. Almost nothing in PuzzleParty is destructive, and a lot of what follows is quicker to learn by poking at it than by reading about it. Anything that would actually remove something — leaving a party, deleting one, removing a member, deleting your account — stops and asks you to confirm first. So if you are curious about a chip, an icon or a row, tap it. You can't break anything.

The rest of this guide is reference. If you just want the path, it's five things, and none of them takes more than a minute. Do them in one sitting or spread them out — the order matters, the timing doesn't.

1. Add today's result. Play your usual puzzle wherever you always play it, then get that one result in. This is the whole habit; everything else is built on top of it.
2. Start a party, or join one. Invite two or three people who already play something daily — family is usually the easiest sell.
3. Make it yours. Pick an avatar, and set notifications to whatever you'll actually tolerate.
4. Make it even easier. On iOS, pin PuzzleParty to your share sheet favorites. Not required — there are four ways to get a result in — but it takes the easiest one down to a single tap.
5. Add a second party whenever you want one. A different group, the same single entry. This is where entering once really starts paying for itself.

From there the app does the work. Scoreboards fill in as your people play, streaks count from your very first result, and reactions and chat show up on their own — none of it needs you to check in.

The only thing worth remembering is the first one: get today's result in.

You need a free account — it's what keeps your scores, streaks, and parties in sync across devices. Signing up takes a few seconds.

The welcome screen then offers three doors. Pick the one that matches how you arrived:

There's no wrong door. A solo account is perfectly useful on its own, and you can join or create a party at any point later.

That four-screen tour isn't only for door three, and it isn't only for your first day: tap your avatar → Help → Show me around to run through it any time.

This is the core loop, and it takes about three seconds once you've done it once. The app reads the result text, works out which game it is, and files the score for you.

The first two are about as quick as each other; what differs is where you end up. The share sheet keeps you in the puzzle app you were already in. Copy-and-tap lands you in PuzzleParty, which is handy when you want to see how everyone else did. Copy-and-tap also works with far more puzzles.

Not every puzzle supports every method, and some have their own small variations. Open a puzzle in the Games tab for instructions written for the device you're holding.

About the clipboard

When you tap +, iOS may ask permission to paste. Tap Allow Paste — and expect iOS to ask again for each newly copied result; that's iOS, not the app. Denying is harmless, it just means pasting it in yourself. Android shows a small system notice instead of asking.

If the asking gets old, iOS has a way out — though not straight away. Once you've allowed a few pastes, iOS usually adds a Paste from Other Apps row to PuzzleParty's entry in the Settings app — that's Apple's Settings, not PuzzleParty's. Set it to Allow and the asking stops.

It won't be there when you first install, and iOS decides when it turns up, so we can't promise exactly when you'll see it. If it isn't there yet, keep allowing the odd paste and look again in a few days.

PuzzleParty never watches your clipboard in the background. It reads it in exactly two moments: when you tap +, and once on first launch to check for a party invite code.

Two rules worth knowing

• One score per puzzle per day. Your first valid result is the one that sticks, so leaderboards stay fair.
• Past days are allowed. You can add results going back up to a year, using the original date. The scoreboards for those days recalculate automatically.

Your home screen shows Today's Lineup — today's puzzles and your progress on them — with your parties below it.

Four tabs run along the bottom:

Tap your avatar in the top-right corner for your profile, settings, this help guide, and Support.

Today's Lineup sits at the top of your home screen, and it's worth a tap: it expands into the day's full picture, sorted into three groups.

Tap any row in the expanded list and you'll get that puzzle on its own: your result and your grid, your streak on it, which parties it counted for, and a button to go and play it if you haven't. Finished puzzles also offer Everyone Today.

Puzzles that don't end at midnight

Daily puzzles come from all over the world, and not all of them roll over at your midnight. Some close hours earlier — the NYT Mini is the one most people meet first.

Rather than let that catch you out, the lineup shows you the deadline. A puzzle that closes early carries a small chip with its closing time, and as the deadline gets closer the chip turns into a countdown. Once it's gone, the row says so, and offers the archive where the puzzle has one.

Everything runs on your phone's clock, so this follows you when you travel. If you'd rather be told than have to look, Settings → Notifications has a heads-up an hour before an early puzzle closes, sent only if you haven't played it yet.

A party is a private group of people comparing scores. Everyone shares their daily results, everyone sees one shared scoreboard, and everyone gets a group chat alongside it. Make one for your family, your coworkers, your existing group chat — whatever.

You can be in as many parties as you like, and one result reaches all of them. The more parties you're in, the more that single entry is worth — and the less work staying in touch becomes.

Creating one

Tap the button at the bottom of the party list on Home, and the app walks you through four short screens:

1. What do you play? — tick the games your party will track, from the full catalog. Nothing is pre-selected and there's no skip, so pick at least one. These become the party's games exactly.
2. Name your party — take one of the suggested names, shuffle for another, or type your own.
3. Party settings — three switches, all changeable later:
   • Spoiler Prevention, on by default
   • Import my puzzle history, off by default, so the party starts from today rather than sweeping in your last 30 days
   • Late submissions, allowed by default, so a day someone missed can still be filled in
4. Invite your people — the invite surface opens as soon as the party exists.

The whole thing takes well under a minute. You're the host of a party you create.

Inviting and joining

Share the party's invite code or link by text, email, or QR code. Anyone who taps the link or enters the 8-character code joins — no account juggling. You can get back to the invite options any time from party settings.

An invite sent to an email address on your account can also appear in the app, where you can join the party, decline, or block the sender; a decline is visible to the sender and the party's host, and a block hides that sender's invites from you without deleting them or telling the sender.

Hosts and members

The host runs the party and controls its major settings — which games it tracks and how it's run. Hosts can add or remove games any time, archive the party when it's run its course, and remove a member who isn't playing nice. Past scoreboards are preserved as accurately as possible when the lineup changes, though there can be timing quirks on the day of a change.

Members play and chat. Everyone, host or not, can personalize the party's icon and colors for their own view.

Finding party settings

This guide points you at party settings a lot — the game lineup lives there, so do spoiler prevention, playing for fun, the invite options and archiving. There are two ways in:

• From your home screen. Each party has a card with a three-dot button. It opens a short menu: Settings, Scoreboard and Standings.
• From inside the party. Tap the gear in the top right.

Both are open to every member, not just the host. Members simply see fewer switches once they're in there — the ones only a host can change are hidden rather than disabled.

Do my past scores count?

Anything you submit for today counts toward the party right away. Your earlier results don't come along by default — a party only pulls in recent past scores if its host turned on Import my puzzle history, which is off unless someone chose it. So expect most parties to start from the day you join.

You don't have to compete — playing for fun

Turn off Score me on the leaderboard in a party's settings to play for fun. You stay fully in the party — feed, chat, reactions, streaks — but results you post from then on won't appear on scoreboards.

• It's per-party: compete with your coworkers, play for fun with your family.
• Others see a small "playing for fun" note next to your name, so nobody wonders where you went.
• Flip it back any time. It isn't retroactive either way.

Leaving a party

Any member can leave a party at any time, from that party's settings. You'll be asked to confirm.

Ending a party

Ending a party is the host's call, and there are two ways to do it.

Archive it when it has run its course but you'd rather keep it. The party stays in your list, marked read-only — you can still open it and look back at it, and nothing new gets added from that point on.

Delete it to remove it outright. That one cannot be undone and it takes the party's data with it, so the app asks you to confirm before it does anything.

Your party keeps two different tallies, and it's worth knowing which is which before the numbers confuse you.

Both can be shown over a stretch of time, so the difference isn't today versus history — it's what gets counted. The scoreboard adds up your margins game by game. Standings ignore margins entirely and look only at who came out on top each day.

Which means they can disagree, and that's the interesting part. Finish a close second in everything and the scoreboard will like you; standings will keep handing three points to whoever edged you. You get both, automatically.

One rule covers everything: you get one point for every party member you beat on each game, plus one. Your day's total is the sum across every game your party plays.

A worked example in a three-player party:

A few consequences worth understanding:

• Finishing always pays. Even last place earns a point — you always get the "plus one." Solving beats skipping every time.
• Skipping is expensive. A missed game earns 0 but still counts toward the ceiling of what you could have scored. A full card of 2nd-place finishes usually beats a mix of wins and gaps.
• Ties are normal. Two players can reach the same total by different routes: 1st + 3rd (3 + 1) ties 2nd + 2nd (2 + 2). Nothing is broken.
• Playing for fun removes you from the math. Members playing for fun don't occupy a rank, and points are calculated as if the party were only its competing members. They can post a great result without bumping anyone down.

Why points rather than one universal score? Because it measures you against your own party that day. That lets wildly different puzzles — a Wordle guess count and a Mini solve time — compare fairly, and keeps the leaderboard about your group rather than a global average.

You can see the scoreboard for a single day, or added up across a week or a month — longer views total these same per-game points.

Standings are the season table. The scoreboard cares how you did in each game; standings care only about where you landed overall on the day, scored the way league tables do in sport:

Win the day and you bank three points. Do that consistently and you pull away — which is the point, because standings are designed to reward turning up day after day rather than one spectacular Tuesday.

You can look at standings by week, month, year to date or all time.

One game at a time

Both of the above cover your whole party — every game combined. If you'd rather know who's actually best at Connections, open the scoreboard and pick a single game: you'll get that game on its own, for the day, week, month or all time. It settles a lot of arguments.

Spoiler Prevention keeps puzzle content out of sight until you're ready for it. When a party has it on, three things are protected:

• Spoiler comments — messages tagged to a specific puzzle stay hidden until you've done that puzzle
• Puzzle entries — other members' scores, emoji grids, and streaks are hidden until you've done the same puzzle
• Daily scoreboards — the full board stays locked until you've completed every puzzle on it

New parties have it on by default. Hosts can turn it off in party settings, and any member can choose Show spoilers anyway for themselves without affecting anyone else.

It does more than protect fairness. It frees up the conversation: you can say whatever you want about today's puzzle without worrying that it's a hint, because nobody sees it until they've finished too.

The party screen

Each party has a shared feed where results and chat live together. Three icons sit up top: the scoreboard for today's rankings, standings for how everyone's done over time, and party settings.

Under the party name, three chips: members (who's in), puzzle count (which games you play), and streak (how the party's doing).

Type in the bar at the bottom to chat. You'll see typing dots when someone else is writing, just like any messaging app.

Reacting and commenting

Press and hold any result or message to add an emoji reaction. Long-press the reactions underneath to see who left them. Everyone gets the standard set; Plus unlocks a whole extra one.

You can tag a comment to a specific puzzle three ways: from party chat, as a note when you share from your phone, or as a note when you paste with Quick Paste. However it arrives, Spoiler Prevention hides it from anyone who hasn't done that puzzle yet.

The People tab

Everyone you share an active party with appears here, sorted by most recent interaction. Search by name to find someone.

Tap anyone to open a private one-on-one conversation, completely separate from party chat. A badge on the tab tells you when you have unread messages.

Keeping it pleasant

Open the menu in any conversation to mute, block, or report that person.

• Mute silences push notifications; a small muted bell appears next to their name, and unread badges still work.
• Block stops their messages immediately. Blocked people are listed under Blocked Users in Settings, where you can undo it.
• Report flags behavior that crosses a line for the team to review.

Direct messages are visible only to the two of you, and party chat only to your party. Everything is encrypted in transit and isn't routinely read — the exception is a reported message or an abuse investigation.

Your personal stats live on your profile page — tap your avatar on Home. Every player gets the basics; Plus unlocks detailed statistics, achievements, and trend graphs for every game you play.

Streaks

PuzzleParty keeps several kinds at once:

• One for each individual game you play
• One for days you play all of your games
• One for days you successfully complete all of your puzzles
• One for each party — days in a row everyone plays every game

Wherever you see a fire icon, that's a streak. Tap it and it tells you exactly what it's counting and what keeps it alive. Overall streaks are on your profile page and free for everyone.

The surest way to keep them all going: play every puzzle in every one of your parties, every day. Your day is your local day, so traveling across time zones won't cost you a streak.

Where you stand

Two different questions, two different tools — both require Plus:

Celebrations

When you hit a big moment, the app throws a little party about it. Keeping a streak alive isn't easy, and this is a party app after all.

Profile and avatar

Tap your avatar → My Profile to change your name and how you appear to friends. Pick an avatar from the built-in options or upload your own; it shows up across all your parties.

Avatar frames are decorative rings around your avatar. Equip one from your profile. Some are exclusive — the Pioneer frames, for instance, can only be worn by early PuzzleParty supporters.

Notifications

By default you'll get a daily reminder to play, alerts when something happens in your parties, and direct messages from friends.

All of it is adjustable in Settings → Notifications: pick exactly which kinds you want, mute individual conversations, or flip one switch to turn everything off.

Your time zone comes from your phone, so everything runs on your clock — the 7 AM daily reminder, the afternoon check-in, and a heads-up an hour before an early-rolling puzzle closes (sent only if you haven't played it yet). Travel and it follows you. Each has its own switch.

If notifications aren't arriving at all, check that they're enabled for PuzzleParty in your phone's system settings, then reopen the app.

The core experience is free and there are no ads. Tracking scores, creating and joining parties, chatting, competing, streaks — all free. You are not on a trial.

PuzzleParty Plus is an optional subscription for people who want to go deeper:

Subscribe during the launch period and you become a Pioneer — the exclusive Pioneer badge and avatar frames stay yours permanently, long after the launch window closes.

The Store tab holds Plus and the Tip Jar. Manage or cancel Plus through your App Store or Google Play account, like any other subscription.

Plenty of people do the crossword on a laptop. Quick Paste means you no longer have to email a Wordle grid to yourself.

Link your computer once:

1. On your phone, open Settings → Linked computers and tap Link a computer.
2. On your computer, go to puzzleparty.app/paste. It shows a six-character code.
3. Type that code into the app and confirm.

Bookmark the page and you're set. Paste a result there and it lands in exactly the same places it would if you'd shared from your phone. You can add a note with it, and that note stays behind Spoiler Prevention just like a comment in the party.

You don't need to sign in on the computer at all — a linked computer can add results without touching anything else on your account. See and remove every linked computer from Settings → Linked computers. A computer stays linked as long as you keep using it; one that goes a full year without a paste unlinks itself.

"PuzzleParty isn't in my share sheet"

This is normal on new iOS installs — the app starts in the full extensions list until you pin it to your favorites.

1. Open your puzzle app and tap Share.
2. Scroll right in the app row and tap ... (More).
3. Tap Edit in the top-right corner.
4. Find PuzzleParty and tap the green +.
5. Tap Done.

It now appears near the left of your share sheet. For an illustrated walkthrough, open Settings → Set Up Share Extension in the app.

"My share didn't import"

Check that you copied the whole result including the title line, and that you actually finished the puzzle. If it still won't take, retry from your share history or contact Support.

"My favorite puzzle isn't supported"

Over 30 daily puzzles are supported — favorites from The New York Times, LinkedIn, and more — with new ones added regularly. Browse the Games tab for the full list. Suggesting a new puzzle takes a few seconds from that tab, and player suggestions drive what gets added next.

Account questions

Deleting your account permanently removes your profile, puzzle history, party memberships, and messages; parties you host get a new host or close. It does not cancel a PuzzleParty Plus subscription — cancel that in the App Store or Google Play first, or billing continues.

Still stuck

Open Support from your avatar menu, or email support@puzzleparty.app. Real people answer.