One shared 5-letter word, six guesses, still the daily that every other daily is measured against.
Why it’s here. Editorial listing. You cannot be a daily-puzzle directory and skip it.
Best daily puzzle games
A typed mix of dailies we actually list. Not a paid ranking. Not a clone farm. We link out. We do not host the games.
A Nikoli Light-Up daily: place lamps so every cell is lit, lamps don’t see each other, numbered walls constrain neighbors.
Why it’s here. Lights type. Signals this is not a Wordle-clone farm.
Sixteen words, four hidden groups, four mistakes — the lateral-thinking daily Room Escape Artist, Greatest Games, PuzzleDaily, and FandomScoop all treat as the second tab after Wordle.
Why it’s here. Word and category logic, not another letter-guessing clone.
Daily domino-placement puzzle with region rules (sums, equals, inequalities). Launched in the NYT suite in 2025.
Why it’s here. Number / spatial, not words.
Draw one continuous path through a grid that hits the numbered cells in order.
Why it’s here. Path type.
Place one crown per row, column, and colored region so none touch, even diagonally.
Why it’s here. Placement logic, not a Wordle reskin.
If the play URL flakes, use the games hub: https://www.linkedin.com/games
Mark a grid of townspeople innocent or criminal; each correct mark unlocks that person’s clue. The site’s own rules: you cannot guess.
Why it’s here. Deduction with a face-grid, not letters.
Daily logic-grid murder: who / how / where / why, harder as the week goes on. Books exist; the daily is the web game at murdle.com.
Why it’s here. Classic logic grid.
One handcrafted cryptic crossword clue a day, with optional hints and a video explanation.
Why it’s here. Word, but not Wordle.
Guess the hidden equation in six tries; every guess must be a valid calculation.
Why it’s here. Number type.
Daily Boggle-style word search on a letter grid; a bonus word ties the board together. New puzzle 3am PT.
Why it’s here. Word path (you trace letters).
Build the largest pen around a horse with a limited wall budget; one shared daily, one submit.
Why it’s here. Spatial / path-adjacent, nothing like Wordle.
Twelve free browser logic puzzles a day at midnight PT (Snake, Pathways, Bridges, Bits, Polyfit, and more). Separate iOS app is its own daily, not a port of the twelve.
Why it’s here. Path + number + packing in one hub.
One handcrafted puzzle a day with changing rules, strung on a story.
Why it’s here. The anti-clone listing: new rules, not a reskin.
Place exactly two stars in every row, column, and region so that stars never touch, even diagonally. Difficulty climbs from Monday to Sunday.
Why it’s here. Star-placement logic. Same family as Queens, different constraint set.
A finished crossword with its letters scrambled. Swap two at a time; green, yellow, and gray tell you whether a letter has landed, belongs in that word, or belongs elsewhere. Six grids a day.
Why it’s here. Crossword-ish without being another five-letter guess.
Guess the country from its silhouette. Each miss gives distance, direction, and a proximity percentage. One shared country a day.
Why it’s here. Geography daily. The country-shape one.
A daily club of original games — Typeshift, Flipart, Really Bad Chess, SpellTower, and a house crossword — not a licensed Wordle shelf. Play on puzzmo.com.
Why it’s here. Hub listing for a club that still designs its own dailies.
Slide columns of letters like a combination lock until the rows spell words. A Puzzmo original, not a Wordle reskin.
Why it’s here. Puzzmo original. Word + spatial, not six guesses.
Tap pivot points so Tetris-like shapes flip and nest inside a border without overlapping. A Puzzmo original visual packing daily.
Why it’s here. Puzzmo original. Packing logic, no letters.
Chess with a lopsided, calculated starting army. Checkmate the computer; the unfairness is the puzzle. A Puzzmo original.
Why it’s here. Puzzmo original. Daily chess that is not a tactics drill.
Guess the mystery country on a globe. Wrong guesses recolor the map by distance: warmer means closer. Unlimited guesses, one country a day.
Why it’s here. Geography. A globe, not a silhouette.
Name the countries that connect a start to a finish. You are scored on how few borders you need.
Why it’s here. Geography path: borders, not flags or shapes.
Read an Observatory of Economic Complexity export chart and guess the country in six tries. Distance hints after each miss.
Why it’s here. Geography by trade data, not maps.
Guess the country from its flag. Six tries; each miss shows how far and which way you are from the answer.
Why it’s here. Geography. Flags, not silhouettes.
Five historical photographs a day. Place each on a map and on a year slider; score is location plus date.
Why it’s here. Geography plus time. A photo, not a country outline.
Guess the country from facts (continent, population, area). Each miss compares your guess to the answer.
Why it’s here. Geography by stats, not pictures.
Find theme words in a letter grid, including a spanning pangram. A NYT daily that is a word search, not a guess.
Why it’s here. Word search with a theme. Not six boxes.
Make words from seven letters; the center letter is required. One hive a day.
Why it’s here. Anagram hive. Older than the clone wave.
Chain words using letters on the sides of a square. Consecutive letters cannot share a side; use every letter.
Why it’s here. Word path around a box.
A five-by-five (sometimes larger) American crossword, one a day, built for a short sit-down.
Why it’s here. Crossword-style daily. The small one.
The weekday-to-Sunday American crossword. Harder as the week goes on. The daily most other crosswords are measured against.
Why it’s here. The full crossword, not a mini and not a clone.
A crossword of six words with letters swapped out of place. Swap pairs until every word is green; you have a limited number of swaps.
Why it’s here. Crossword grid plus swap logic. Not a guess-the-word clone.
Guess the secret word by meaning. Each guess gets a similarity score from word embeddings; closer semantics score higher.
Why it’s here. Semantic search, not letter colors.
Guess the secret word. Each guess is ranked by how close it is in context to the answer, from an AI language model.
Why it’s here. Another semantic daily, different model than Semantle.
Guess the film from a still. Six tries; each miss reveals a more obvious frame.
Why it’s here. Picture daily. Movies, not letters.
Fill a grid with suns and moons so each row and column is balanced. No more than two of the same symbol may sit side by side.
Why it’s here. Binary placement logic. Not a word game.
If the play URL flakes, use the games hub: https://www.linkedin.com/games
Answer trivia clues, then reorder the rows into a word ladder — each word one letter from the next — to unlock the top and bottom.
Why it’s here. Crossword-adjacent word ladder, not a five-letter clone.
Play LinkedIn CrossclimbListing
If the play URL flakes, use the games hub: https://www.linkedin.com/games
See one clue at a time and name the category that ties them together. Wrong guesses cost you; later clues get easier.
Why it’s here. Category deduction. Sister to Connections, different reveal.
If the play URL flakes, use the games hub: https://www.linkedin.com/games
A compact Sudoku on LinkedIn’s games page. One daily grid.
Why it’s here. Number placement, short sit-down.
Play LinkedIn Mini SudokuListing
If the play URL flakes, use the games hub: https://www.linkedin.com/games
Latin-square arithmetic: fill a grid so each row and column uses 1–n once, and each cage hits its target with the given operation.
Why it’s here. Number logic older than the daily-clone wave.
Fill a Latin square using inequality signs between cells. A daily number-logic grid.
Why it’s here. Number type with inequalities, not an equation guess.
The standard 9×9 daily: digits 1–9 once per row, column, and box. sudoku.com hosts a fresh grid every day.
Why it’s here. The number daily people already know.
A fresh tactics position a day on Chess.com. Find the winning line.
Why it’s here. Chess as a daily, hosted by the site that runs the puzzles.
One shared tactics puzzle a day on Lichess. Free, no account required to try it.
Why it’s here. Open-source chess daily.
Guess the song from its isolated tracks. Each miss adds another instrument until the mix is full.
Why it’s here. Music daily. Audio, not letters.
Seven clues, seven words. Build each answer from letter tiles. A long-running daily, not a 2022 clone.
Why it’s here. Clued anagrams. Crossword-adjacent.
Unscramble words, then use marked letters for a cartoon-caption punchline. Newspaper daily, still on jumble.com.
Why it’s here. The old scrambled-word daily.
Fill the grid with green and blue regions that never touch. Each number is the size of its field; same-color fields cannot share an edge.
Why it’s here. Inkwell’s second daily. Region logic, not star placement.
Guess the organism. Each miss shows how it sits on the tree of life relative to the answer.
Why it’s here. Taxonomy daily. Biology, not a wordle.
Name nine movies that hit given box-office targets so rows and columns sum correctly. One card a day.
Why it’s here. Number + movies. A grid, not a still.
Turn a start word into an end word by changing one letter at a time, using real words only. One pair a day.
Why it’s here. Word ladder. Not a six-guess clone.
Quick, cryptic, prize, and more — the Guardian’s daily crossword desk. British style, free to play in the browser.
Why it’s here. Crossword-style daily that is not the NYT.
Draw a river that forms a single loop and passes through every cell. No branches, forks, or dead ends; the river must flow around walls and islands. Difficulty climbs from Monday to Sunday.
Why it’s here. Inkwell’s loop daily. Path type, not stars or fields.
Use row and column number clues to shade cells and uncover a hidden pixel-art picture. Multiple blocks per line are allowed. Difficulty climbs from Monday to Sunday.
Why it’s here. Inkwell’s picture-from-clues daily. Picross-style logic, not another star grid.
Find words in a letter tower. Clearing words drops the rest of the grid. A Zach Gage original on Puzzmo.
Why it’s here. Puzzmo original. Word path that clears a tower, not six guesses.
Build a better board from twenty-five tiles, often picked on a theme by Puzzmo’s friends, community members, and guests. There’s always a better board.
Why it’s here. Puzzmo original. Tile board, not a five-letter clone.
Match pairs of numbers like a memory game, with a Sudoku twist: no number can appear in the same row, column, or box twice. A Puzzmo original.
Why it’s here. Puzzmo original. Memory plus Latin-square rules, not words.
Add cards one by one to a grid to build poker hands in the rows and columns. Highest overall score wins. A Puzzmo original.
Why it’s here. Puzzmo original. Hands on a grid, not a Wordle.
Solve nested clues inside a paragraph to reveal a fun fact about this day in history. An Atlantic daily.
Why it’s here. Nested-clue daily. Not six boxes and not a crossword grid.
Five locations a day, often tied to this day in history. Tap each one on a 3D globe; score is how close you land, with a bonus for the right country.
Why it’s here. Geography by placement, not silhouette guessing. A map you tap.
A 3×3 movie trivia grid from Vulture. Fill each cell with a film that fits both the row and column clue. Nine guesses on weekdays.
Why it’s here. Movie trivia with placement scarcity. Sister energy to Box Office Game, different grid.
Guess the artist from four works shown by the National Gallery of Art. Four guesses, one shared artist a day.
Why it’s here. Picture daily for art, not film. Museum-made.
Guess the mystery active NBA player in eight tries. Each miss compares team, conference, division, position, height, age, and jersey number. Run by the NBPA.
Why it’s here. Sports deduction daily. Attribute tiles, not a Wordle reskin.
A 3×3 sports trivia grid (baseball and more). Name a player who fits both the row and column for each cell. Rarity scoring rewards obscure correct picks.
Why it’s here. Sports trivia grid daily. Trivia with placement, not six letter boxes.
A 3×3 country grid. Each cell needs a country that fits both the row and column category. Eighteen guesses, no repeats; lower population-rank scores win.
Why it’s here. Geography as a trivia grid, not a silhouette or flag.
Climb a word-transformation ladder. Clues are out of order; each rung changes the word by anagram, letter swap, or meaning until you reach the end. By Sandy Weisz.
Why it’s here. Word ladder with cryptic-ish wordplay. Not six guesses at one five-letter word.
Four five-letter words at once. Every guess applies to all four boards. Nine tries. Now at Merriam-Webster.
Why it’s here. The multi-board Wordle that stuck. Editorial listing for the format’s standard-bearer.
The Los Angeles Times daily crossword. American-style grid, free to play in the browser.
Why it’s here. Crossword-style daily that is not the NYT and not the Guardian.
Twelve candidate countries, truthful land-border and coastline clues. Cross out impossibles until one country remains. Deduction, not route-building.
Why it’s here. Geography as a logic grid. Borders as constraints, not a path to build (that’s Travle).