Almost everybody knows about the iconic New York Times games and most people play them every day. Whether you start your morning with Wordle or do Connections in class when you get bored, they’re a fun way to get your brain gears rotating. But what happens when you finish all of the available games and still have half an hour left of class? Or you read somewhere that the workers at New York Times are going on strike and you want to support the cause? Well guess what, dear reader, your daily game lineup is about to be changed for the better.
Although there is not much advertisement for daily games outside of those from New York Times, there are so many hidden gems out there that deserve recognition. They’re entertaining, make you think, and reset at midnight for you to do all over again. There are daily games for essentially any field of interest, like math, music, geography, vocabulary, and more. So, without further ado, here are some of the most addicting, non-NYT daily games that are worth looking into.
Orbits
If you’re familiar with the game show Chain Reaction, Orbits is right up your alley. You are given a word bank as well as a square-shaped chain, and the goal is to fill up the square so that all of the words that connect to each other are associated, or “orbit” each other. For example, you might connect “milk” to “chocolate” to make “chocolate milk,” and then “man” to the other side of milk to make “milk man.” You are given 2-3 chances to correctly fill out the square, and there are three levels of increasing difficulty. When playing, the game will start you in the top left corner and make you work clockwise, however in the settings there is a “prototype mode” which lets you start wherever on the square and work forward or backward. All in all, it’s a fun way to test your word association and pattern recognition!
wEAVER
Weaver feels like a New York Times game because it bears a similarity to Wordle, but it is slightly more difficult. In the regular mode, you are given two words of usually four or five letters, and you have to turn the word on the top into the word on the bottom by only changing one letter per move. That doesn’t sound all that bad, but it’s important to take into account that every time you change a letter, the resulting word must be real. There are other modes on the website as well; one includes adding letters alongside changing them, and one has a goal similar to that of the New York Times Spelling Bee. If you like a challenge, try and see if you can solve the Weaver.
Globle
This one’s for all the geography lovers. Every day the developers pick a country on the world map, and players have to guess which one it is. This game is played on a colder-warmer scale, where countries closer to the answer are a darker red and countries farther away are lighter. You do need a pretty extensive knowledge of the globe to play this game, especially when the country is an island in the Caribbean or the Pacific. But even if you don’t, you become more familiar with the organization of the countries the more you play, and it’s fun once you start being able to find the correct country in less and less guesses. Try it out!
Contexto
This game is essentially Globle but with words. Every day there is a secret word, and you have to try and guess what it is through its relation to other words. Every word guessed is sorted based on how similar it is to the secret word, and the lower the number given, the closer you are to it (the secret word is 1). You can guess almost any word out there, which sounds kind of vast and time-consuming, but as the number given to you gets lower, it is easier to narrow it down. See how many guesses it takes you!
Quordle
https://www.merriam-webster.com/games/quordle/#
Enjoy the Wordle? Think you could solve four of them at once? Then this is the game for you! Each day you are given four Wordle grids, and nine attempts to solve them all at the same time; so if you start typing in one grid, it appears in all four. Alongside the classic setting, there’s a ‘chill’ mode where you are given twelve attempts, and ‘extreme’ where you are given eight. If you’re good at the Wordle and want that extra challenge, Quordle is what you need.
Daily dozen
Who else loves a good trivia game? Each day there are nine trivia questions (even though it’s titled Daily Dozen, don’t know why that is), and the categories usually surround sports, food, television, movies, music, and a “celebrity mashup,” where two celebrities are photoshopped into one and you have to guess who the two are. Once you finish the game, you can see what percentage of the players got each question right, and if all the players were struggling together or you’re the odd one out. Want to increase your trivia knowledge? Able to recognize celebrities by their hairline only? Consider adding the Daily Dozen to your lineup.
Minute cryptic
Cryptics and cryptic crosswords can appear very intimidating and confusing at first, but the more you play the easier it is to understand how exactly they work. In a cryptic there are three important sections to point out: the definition, which, like a regular crossword, tells you what the answer means and is usually at the beginning or end of a clue; the fodder, where the answer is hidden in certain words and letters; and the indicators, which tell you what you need to change about the fodder to get your answer. For example, the clue “Myopic colonel clutches flute (7)” is quite simple: “clutches” indicates that the answer is hidden in between “myopic colonel,” the definition is “flute,” and it’s seven letters long. In between “myopic” and “colonel” is the word “piccolo,” meaning that’s your answer! This indicator is a containing indicator, however there are also indicators that tell you to reverse or anagram words, as well as delete or add letters. Sometimes you get the answer and it’s an aha moment, other times the answer is a total reach and you wonder how anyone could have gotten that. Either way, it is a great game to get your brain working and making associations.
Raddle
This can best be explained as a mix between Orbits and a crossword puzzle. You are given a “ladder” of words in which only the top and bottom are in place; there is also a list of clues, but they are not in the correct order. It is up to you to figure out which clue is needed for the rung of the ladder directly next to the words already filled out, and solve said clue. Sometimes the clue will ask you to remove a letter or letters, sometimes they will ask you to anagram a word, and sometimes it’s simply word association. It’s a great busywork game if you’re ever bored, and they often have themes for certain days and weeks; they recently had Groundhog Day and Olympics as puzzle themes!
There’s likely an NYT-adjacent game for any interest out there, but they don’t usually get that much promotion. Go exploring! Find new games! Get addicted! Before you know it, you’ll have a daily game lineup that you never get bored of.