You would be surprised by how many games like Wordle we get down to solve every day after work. While there’s a special place in our hearts for Josh Wardle’s Wordle, the five-letter word game that took the world by storm in 2021, the other similar games that have spawned ever since have also been a lot of fun. The game wasn’t the first word game to gain popularity—newspapers have done their bit to keep crosswords and other number puzzles alive for decades—however, it did show us that there was magic in solving little puzzles with your friends and family every day.

If you’re looking for some Wordle alternatives, whether that’s word games or other types of daily puzzles that you can solve, we have quite a few fun options for you to consider. 

Top daily puzzles online

Image: Pexels

Exploring Some Fun Games like Wordle

When it comes to looking for Wordle alternatives, a few different considerations come into play. There are a vast number of word game alternatives that are available to play that update on a daily basis with a new puzzle each day. If you’re not much of a Word game player and skipped out on the Wordle hype precisely for that reason, there are other types of daily puzzles online that can cater to your interest. Whether you love movies and music or enjoy testing the limits of your general knowledge, there’s a fun, low-stakes game out there for you too.

All of these are easily accessible through there websites and can be conveniently played on your phone so they require no investments or fancy setups.

The New York Times Games 

In your search for games like Wordle, there’s no need to look too far. The New York Times has a fun collection of games that are renewed daily. There are a wide collection of games that we won’t dive into like the Spelling Bee, LetterBoxed, and Tiles, but you can give them a go if you prefer. The LinkedIn puzzles have a prime spot in our daily roster, but we’ve dived into those already if you want to know what they’re about.

strands

Image: Strands

Strands

This word game alternative features a jumble of letters that have words hidden among them. A general theme links the words together and once you understand what the theme means, it becomes easier to find the words. You are not obligated to link the letters in a straight line vertically or horizontally; instead, letters can be linked to any adjacent letter to form a word. The main word that defines the theme, the Spanagram, spans the full length of the search box. Finding random words unrelated to the theme can help you unlock hints that show you where to find a word. It sounds easy but it can be deceptively hard some days.

Connections

The game begins with a collection of 16 words randomly arranged. The words can be distributed into four separate categories with four words each. Your task is to identify the words that form each category and rearrange the words on the screen and the catch is that you can only make four mistakes as you try to identify the sets. The game sounds extremely simple but the categories rarely are. Separating the words into sections can take some brain power but the joy of solving it is quite worth the stress.

The Mini Crossword

If regular crosswords take up too much time and you don’t want to spend hours hunched over a single clue, then the Mini Crossword is a good Wordle alternative. The clues are short and there are only a few of them to solve. The puzzle is easy to solve on most days, although it does make references to some general knowledge details that may give you pause like the name of an actor in a movie or an album released by a particular artist.

circuits

Image: One of our personal favorites, Circuits.

Some Fun Word Game Alternatives to Try Out

If you’re specifically interested in word games that put your vocabulary to the test and bring in some elements of wordplay, then try these daily games out.

Quordle

If Wordle is too simple for you, why not try solving multiple of the world puzzles at once? Quordle gives you four separate words that you have to find at once, and you get eight tries to discover them all. When a letter turns green it’s in the right place, and when it turns yellow, you have to try it in a different spot. Still too simple? Try Octordly, where you find eight words at once, or Sedecordle, where you’re expected to guess sixteen different words.

SquareWord

This game might look like Wordle but it has a slightly different concept. You still have to guess five-letter words but in a way that helps you find five words at once. With every guess, letters that are in the word appear in a column on the side, while a correctly guessed letter is put in its spot in the box. You have to try and find all five words within the target of 15 guesses. 

LetterLoop

This word game requires you to unscramble two 5-letter words. The words form a perfect loop where the end of one word becomes the beginning of the second word. The end of the second word is the first letter of the first word. 

Orbits

This Wordle alternative still expects you to think about words, but instead of discovering them, you have to link a set of eight words together, one after the other. Each word can be followed up by one word from the options available at the bottom, creating a complete chain of two-word phrases. The entire archive of older games is available to play when you finish with the daily puzzle. 

Waffles 

This game requires you to rearrange letters to find out the correct words laid out on the board. You have a limited number of swaps to use to shuffle the letters around so you have to be wary about where you move a letter. Waffle uses the same color scheme as Wordle so it’s easy to understand when a letter is in the correct spot. You can access the archive of all the older puzzles, and every week, a large Deluxe waffle is available to solve as well. 

Circuits

This is one of the best daily games out there and one of our personal favorites. The game board has a map of some boxes laid out in front of you, with some of them filled in. Some of the words are linked, which means you can add a word there to make up a popular phrase. If I say light and you say “bulb,” “saber,” or “Yagami,” then you understand how this game works. 

Any of these could be the right answer but you also have to connect the word to the next word it is linked to. Each connection is separate from the others so there is no general theme governing the board. You have unlimited guesses to figure the answers out but only 4 bolts or clues available to assist you. 

word game alternatives

Image: MinuteCryptic

MinuteCryptic

This is another of our favorite Wordle alternatives, although we are admittedly terrible at solving them. This daily game takes the form of a cryptic crossword where you have one puzzle to solve every day. To find the word, you must invest in some heavy wordplay to interpret what the clue means as it is, by definition, never straightforward. 

If you’ve never tried cryptic crosswords before, we recommend spending some time reading their instruction page to understand what they mean by the “definition” and what some wordplay indicators are to get a better sense of how to solve them. The game creators also have a very useful Instagram and YouTube page where they break down the solutions to the daily puzzles. If you want to expand on your out-of-the-box thinking, this is one of the best games to try. 

Blossom

This Merriam-Webster word game looks very simplistic and childlike at first glance, but it’s a true test of your vocabulary. You have 7 letters available and you are allowed to make 12 words with them, ensuring you use the central letter in each one. The longer the word, the better the score. It can be quite humbling to see the long list of words you could have made when the game finally ends.

ClickWord

Much like Scrabble, you are presented with a small playing board with a few letters fixed on it and you have 60 other titles to make words. You receive these letters three at a time and the next set of letters only appears after you have already placed the existing three on the board. When you make a complete word, you must collect it from the board immediately or forfeit the chance to collect it until you add another letter to it. 

The game moves fast and you don’t have too much space to expand on words. You have to make calculated decisions on what words you collect for your score and what you leave on the board. The daily puzzle changes every day but you can use the practice puzzle to play as many rounds as you like. 

WordPeaks

Another interesting daily word game to try, this one requires you to guess the correct word within 6 tries. The letters become highlighted in three colors—green, orange, and blue. Green means the letter is in the correct spot. Orange means the letter is too early in the alphabet so if you guess “H” and it turns orange, then the correct letter lies between I and Z. Blue works in the opposite way, showing you that the letter you used occurs too late in the alphabet. If you guess “T” and the letter turns blue, the correct alphabet in that spot lies between A and S. These colors help you narrow down the letters more gradually. 

cinenerdle

Image: CineNerdle

Best Daily Games For Those Who Don’t Like Word Games

Not everyone enjoys word games and that’s an entirely fair preference. If you still want to have a few games that you can come back to daily, there are a lot of games that explore your personal interests and general knowledge instead. Let’s look at some of the best daily games we’ve found for you that don’t involve whipping out a dictionary.

CineNerdle

If you love movies and have a good familiarity with movie posters and popular films in different genres, CineNerdle is perfect for you. The game starts with a grid of nine boxes that hide a movie poster. Tapping on the box unveils a section of the poster and the game ends when you either flip all the boxes on the grid or guess the name of the movie correctly. There is also a weekly theme for all the daily puzzles of the week, which you can guess at any point during the week. The game also provides the genre of the movie to help you make a guess. 

Bandle

Think you’re an expert on music? Test your knowledge with the Bandle game. The game breaks down the song of the day into drums, bass, electric guitar, a voice cover, and a final additional clue. You are also provided with the year of release and YouTube views. When the game begins, you can only listen to the drums to try and guess what the song is. If you find that insufficient, you can hit skip to get the next clue. Try to guess the song in as few moves as possible.

Globle

This game tests your knowledge about the places of countries on the globe and how quickly you can guess the right answer for the day. You start the game by guessing the name of a country, and the game will show you how hot or cold your guess is. The closer you are to the right answer, the more red the location on the map becomes. The game also tells you the distance of your guess to the closest border of the right answer—both in miles and kilometers—if that helps you simplify things. Experiment with your knowledge of the globe to land on the right answer. If you find this fun, Statele and Flagle are other geography-based games you can try.

Top 5: Daily Trivia

Every day, a new category is selected and you have to guess the top 5 responses in that category. You have 5 lives available to find all the right answers. Correct answers show up on the board and with every wrong answer, you lose a life. For an added test of your knowledge, try to guess it in the right order. Stay true to yourself and do not google the answers.

squirdle

Image: Squirdle

Squirdle

Who’s that Pokemon? If you love the Pokemon universe and know everything there is to know about these pocket monsters, then this is one of the best daily games for you to try out. Start the game by making a guess and you’ll be given information about 5 categories—gen, type 1, type 2, height, and weight. 

If your guess matches the correct answer in any of the categories, the Pokeball under it will turn green, and if it’s wrong, it’ll turn red. The correct type in the wrong block will show as yellow. For height and weight, the Pokeball will have an upward arrow up sign which means you guessed too low and need to aim higher, or an arrow down sign which means you guessed too high and need to aim for a Pokemon that’s smaller. 

If you know your Pokemons, this should be easy enough for you. You have nine guesses to find the right answer. If this is too easy for you, PokeDoku is another Pokemon game that might interest you but if you have wider gaming interests, try Guess the Game. 

Guess the Book

For people who love reading, of course there’s a fun daily puzzle out there for you as well. Guess the Book is a daily game that provides you with snippets of books that can help you guess the title of the book. With every hint you take, which is what happens when you click Skip, a new section is revealed and you also have additional clues available to you. At first, you have the Goodreads rating along with the snippet, but with the next hints, you also get clues like the genre, year or release, name of the author, name of a character, and finally the plot of the book. You have 6 chances to get it right and every skip also counts as using up a chance. 

These other daily games may not fall under the “games like Wordle” category per se, but they also present a wide list of options to test your brainpower when you’re stuck with one of the word games. 

These are some of the top daily puzzles available online and all of them give a player a quick break from their usual routine to focus their attention on something that isn’t social media. It’s a definite win in our books!