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Ask HN: What are your favourite daily puzzle games?

by cookie_monsta on 4/29/25, 12:41 PM with 16 comments

I got hooked on daily puzzle games like a lot of people, with Wordle and since then have been collecting them here and there. Most of my faves have been posted here by creators or fans, others I don't remember how I found them. Anyway, it's been a while since we've had a dedicated thread for people to share their favourites, but there are new ones coming out all the time, so I'm curious to know if there are any good ones I'm missing out on. I guess my only real criteria are that they are browser-based, mobile friendly, free to play and somewhat original. Below are the ones I regularly play:

From the NYT: Wordle, connections and the mini

https://wordchase.semantle.com guess the word guided by AI hints

https://travle.earth/ get from one country to another by passing through bordering countries

https://wafflegame.net/ drag and drop letters to make a "waffle" of words

https://imsqueezy.com/ insert letters to make other words, to form 3 words connected by a theme

https://truncate.town/ kind of an adversarial scrabble, PvP or against the computer

https://ziggurwords.com/ unscramble letters to find increasingly longer words

https://crosswordle.com/ a crossword/wordle hybrid

https://www.threemagicwords.app/ more word unscrambling

https://www.theatlantic.com/games/bracket-city/ hard to explain - uncover a famous event in history by unwrapping nested clues?

https://www.omiword.com/ drag tiles within sectors to spell 4 common words

Am I missing any good ones?

by JoshTriplett on 4/29/25, 12:53 PM
I enjoy good puzzle games, but I really dislike the trend towards "daily" games. Whenever I find one, I look for whatever option they have for randomly generated "practice" games (ignoring the "daily" puzzle), and if they don't have one, abandon the game entirely. I can understand that people enjoy comparing their results on a particular game, but to me, that's much less interesting than being able to actually play the game for more than five minutes.
The latest small browser-based puzzle game I've enjoyed: https://danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper
by enhdless on 4/29/25, 4:21 PM
Someone posted a daily logic puzzle in the "What are you working on?" thread yesterday, titled Clues by Sam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43821457
I enjoyed it! Not too difficult but still required some thinking.
by zippyman55 on 4/29/25, 12:59 PM
Lichess.org has great chess puzzzles. I like that you get a puzzle rating and have metric to track cognitive decline.
by mtmail on 4/29/25, 12:51 PM
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ - guess the country
https://timeguessr.com/ - guess a photo's year and location
by anenefan on 4/29/25, 1:31 PM
So not daily but maybe three days or so if I need to put the mind into neutral I do something repetitive [1] there are other puzzles at the site as well that are bit more challenging eg [2]
[1] https://www.mathsisfun.com/games/towerofhanoi.html
[2] https://www.mathsisfun.com/games/arrange.html
by savorypiano on 5/4/25, 3:57 PM
https://wordcrux.com
This is a mini crossword played semi-Wordle style. You get a one word hint, and guess the words. Three wrong guesses on any square and the game is over.
by LarryMade2 on 4/30/25, 1:27 AM
How about wordle x 8 - Octordle - https://www.britannica.com/games/octordle/?mode=daily
by ecesena on 4/30/25, 2:17 AM
I played bonza for a few years https://www.bonzapuzzles.com
by austin-cheney on 4/30/25, 10:10 AM
Worldle. https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/
by Jeremy1026 on 4/29/25, 12:54 PM
I like NYT Strands. It's a word search where you're given a theme, but not the specific words you need to find.
by luhego on 4/29/25, 3:18 PM
Tango from Linkedin
by Quinzel on 4/30/25, 1:51 AM
Blockudoku