A novel computationally efficient algorithm in terms of the time-varying symbolic dynamic method is proposed to estimate the unknown initial conditions of coupled map lattices (CMLs). The presented method combines symbolic dynamics with time-varying control parameters to develop a time-varying scheme for estimating the initial condition of multi-dimensional spatiotemporal chaotic signals. The performances of the presented time-varying estimator in both noiseless and noisy environments are analysed and compared with the common time-invariant estimator. Simulations are carried out and the obtained results show that the proposed method provides an efficient estimation of the initial condition of each lattice in the coupled system. The algorithm cannot yield an asymptotically unbiased estimation due to the effect of the coupling term, but the estimation with the time-varying algorithm is closer to the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) than that with the time-invariant estimation method, especially at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs).