Tell me about your favourite web-based logic puzzles!
I was never a wordle fanatic, but I am hooked on this Alphable game now https://geoffpevlin.com/games/alphable/. I also play https://cluesbysam.com/.
Do people know of other web-based (hopefully free) logic puzzles like these? I like the daily format, but wouldn't limit myself to that if there are others that are also interesting.
I've done all of the https://www.rustylake.com/ games too, which I quite enjoyed, but these types of puzzles require a little bit more time investment that I don't really have right now. (I also hated that some of the "logic" in those games did not seem to make sense to me, and I'd have to google the answer to continue with the game.)
I also like https://timeguessr.com/ but don't return to that one as frequently because I can't play it on my phone.
I really like in-person escape games but they are expensive and vary drastically in quality, so was very happy to find these types of games scratch that same itch.
I like Murdle quite a bit. Use logic and clues to solve a mini murder mystery. It’s your classic logic grid puzzle like you might have done back in school.
This was really fun. Thank you for sharing
I recently found enclose.horse.
Came here for this one. It’s cute!
Would it be a tildes post about puzzle games if we didn't find a way to sneak in Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection? No, here they are in browser
https://puzzles.twistymaze.com/
I've played Rogule some, it's a daily mini rogue dungeon trying to score the highest and finish. I think maybe it was the randomness of combat that made it not as interesting to compare scores though.
https://rogule.com/
I forgot to bookmark the recent game with fencing in the horse or I'd recommend that too.
You're thinking of https://enclose.horse, which is fantastic.
I want to love Rogule, but RNG is proper random and some days are not winnable. I rarely had a 10+ day streak.
Some great games posted here, I'd like to add Dragonsweeper. It's basically minesweeper with extra steps. A bit tricky at first but is completely possible to not just beat the game but beat it perfectly and while completing all the achievements in one go (complete the game, don't kill the two lovers, don't kill any rats, and don't break the egg).
I love this one. Once you figure out all the patterns it adds another layer of puzzle to regular minesweeper.
I suggest not looking up the patterns and mechanics, but rather you should follow the hints within the game. Particularly, once you fuck up, study the board after it's revealed.
Anyway, I guess by beating it perfectly while getting all the achievements in one go, you don't mean getting a perfect score of 265 or whatever, since I still don't know exactly why I don't get that every time I win (unless I clicked on a brick or leveled up with health remaining).
I use this site to find and keep track of all the daily games I like to play. Most of my favorites are trivia/entertainment based, but It has a couple of dozen sites listed under the math/logic section that might be relevant.
This is really great! Thanks
Maybe not exactly what you mean, but I've gotten into Puzzmo.com recently. Zach Gage did a lot of great mobile games, and this is basically his (and co) version of more modern newspaper games page.
If a bunch of Tildes people were into it, there's good community and competition features built in. it's slick on both browser and mobile app.
I used to love Puzzmo until I found out they track, collect, and sell user data. Presumably also for subscribers, since no exception is listed to my knowledge. They also have forced arbitration.
I don't want to support that business model. It runs counter to my personal preferences on browser-based games, namely portability and transparency.
I play Puzzmo puzzles every day - I got into them via the crosswords but I do most of the other puzzles (not the poker or chess ones because I'm no good at those). Well recommended from me.
It doesn't match your "puzzle" criteria perfectly but I recently released my first daily game called "Noun Sense", you can try it here: https://daily.gametje.com. (It's free). You can play as a guest or create an account to keep track of progress/add friends/review the leaderboard etc.
The gist is you get 10 adjectives a day and you try to guess the most frequently used noun that follows that adjective. The more frequent the usage, the higher the score. Best possible score is 1000 pts a day.
I have a detailed blog post about it here that explains a bit more about how I built it: https://blog.gametje.com/posts/2026-02-23/
Sorry for the second reply but are you taking feedback? I’m realizing that in the postgame summary I would love to see the “correct” noun for each adjective revealed. Not sure if player answers are being sent back to the server (or if you’d even want them to) but there might be room for a fun peek at the most-guessed, non-correct answers from players too.
Also: I love the way the PWA works. Feels great on iOS!
Hey thanks for trying it! The top 10 answers for each word are revealed on previous days (appears as an icon on the left side of each word). I still need to include that in the tutorial or a tooltip. I didn't want to show them on the current day to prevent cheating with a 2nd account or throwaway guest (some people are serious about competing!). So if you visit the site again, you can change the date at the top to yesterday and before and review your game(s) and see the top answers. You can also play previous days if you missed them.
That's a great idea about showing the most guessed answers. Did you mean the most incorrect (score of 0?) or just most guessed in general? Would you want to see that immediately for that day? Or only previous days? Obviously there is a bit of lag time before there is a good amount of completed games to pull from given it starts fresh each day.
I only just released it the other day, so still building the player base and making adjustments.
There's a multiplayer version in the works as well. Still deciding on the initial mode. Whether it is free for all or team vs team, or entirely co-op with racing a clock.
Oh, I had overlooked that icon that reveals the top 10 words… that’s great! That list format works well for this game.
What I meant by “most-guessed, non-correct answers from players” was to just show whatever word was submitted the most, that wasn’t the 100-point answer. That was assuming only the 100-point answer would be shown, not a whole top 10 list. Now that I’m aware of that, I wonder if a second list — the top 10 player guesses for this word — could be shown next to the existing list in the same popup. It would be fun to compare how players diverged from the game’s dataset, in aggregate. I guess since the list is unavailable for the current day it would allow you to build the player guesses list from the full collection of completed games for that day, sidestepping the lag time issue you mentioned.
(Personally I’d prefer to see the lists immediately after completing my game, even if there’s not much player-guess data available yet. Just because my thought processes for each of my own guesses are still fresh in my mind from playing, at that moment. If I have to wait 24 hours a lot of interest will have waned. But I take your point about competitiveness and cheating.)
I decided to relax the "cheating" prevention a bit. So now you can see the top 3 answers for each adjective after you have played for the day (also the current day)
I removed the top 10 overlay for previous days as it was a bit hidden and buggy. You can view the top 3 in a similar manner for previous days.
I was just admiring that when I played a couple hours ago. I like it! Is the leaderboard new too or had I just missed it previously? It’s fun to see how I rank, I got #2 yesterday and again today (so far). Need to find out who
********is, that’s my nemesis, lol.The leaderboard has been there. Not sure if you have a regular account, but there is a whole friend system so you can see how your friends stack up on the leaderboard too. And their scores in a timeline etc.
Still working on the guest -> regular account migration flow to keep progress. I'll add support for regular username/pwd as well early next week.
That was fun! I'm +1ing the idea of making the top results reviewable right away. I think that actually makes it less prone to abuse. With games like wordle and most all the daily games there's not really any concern for "cheating" because the answers are right there. Sure you could cheat but no one (or at least no one that you really care about) is going to do that and everyone would naturally be weary of any unusually high results. But if you try to hide the results you're kind of turning cracking this into it's own mini game and more people might be inspired to actually try since there's some degree of "trust" to the results.
It would also just be really cool to see the results right away.. by the time tomorrow has rolled around im not really invested in those answers anymore :)
Will try to add this today. Thanks for playing and for the suggestion!
Did you mean you want to immediately see it after each word? Or some kind of toggle at the end to show it for all words?
Trying to balance the convenience and not disrupting the core gameplay loop.
Nice! I was thinking at the end of the day after you've finished and have your final score.
Added the top 3 functionality now. So you can use the bulk toggle at the bottom by the scores or tap each row after the game is completed.
Awesome! I was playing today and noticed. I love that that's a nice implementation. Thanks!
Question for you— I just played today’s and scored 90 points for one of my answers. When I expanded the top three, it showed me words valuing 100, 87, and 74 points. No mention of my word in the list though. What could be the cause of that?
Spoilers about the word that may be relevant
The adjective was SONIC. I guessed HEDGEHOG. These two words aren’t usually adjacent — they’re separated by “the” — but apparently that’s okay for scoring purposes. But the top 3 words (BOOM, SCREWDRIVER, and WEAPON) are always adjacent to the adjective. I’m not sure if that’s relevant but it seems like it might be.
Ahh very true! I have a ChatGPT fallback of more "modern" words for answers my dataset did not include. I should also include those in the top 3 😅. I forgot those things could show up with actual people's answers and now being able to compare to the top. You have a keen eye!
Those more modern answers are stored separately and are generated ahead of time by asking ChatGPT to list the top 25 for a given adjective. I should probably just include those into the main dataset for future use anyway.
I will fix that with my next update. Thanks for the bug report.
Sorry to keep bumping this thread but I’ve got a few days of stats under my belt now (I was #1 yesterday!) and finally decided to try the guest account migration flow with Discord. This is within the PWA on iOS.
I was able to authenticate and authorize Gametje but the next screen afterward was the login view on your side, with the Discord/Google/Guest choices. The Discord option just repeated that process, returning me to the same place. Since I don’t want to use Google and there are no other choices on this screen (or standard nav controls because PWA) I tried Continue as Guest. That brought me back to the game, but with my existing session wiped. Looks like I lost all my stats. 😭
I sent you a DM, hopefully I can fix it for you tomorrow. (Going to bed now)
Sorry for the double reply. Wanted to ask about the iOS PWA since you managed to install it.
Did you know how to do that on your own? Or did you see the help in my blog post?
I find it to be SOOO many steps to install it on iOS. It is quite hidden in the "Share" section which doesn't make much sense. I figured not that many people would know how to do it. I knew it was possible and was still confused when I figured it out the first time.
I was considering making an app wrapper specifically for the App Store just to help with discoverability and ease of installation. Is that something you'd use?
Good question. I was aware of PWAs as a thing that existed but I’ve never actually tried it before. I followed your instructions in the blog post.
On iOS you can follow those same steps to add a web page to your home screen but it’s just a glorified bookmark; if you tap it, the page just opens in Safari. I’ve don’t that before. When I followed the process for Noun Sense, iOS didn’t give me any indication this would behave differently. I was actually surprised to see that the game is treated like its own app, separate from Safari. Apple certainly didn’t make it obvious what to expect.
I prefer having the game separate from Safari. I have too many browser tabs open and don’t want a daily game, which I intend to play daily, to get lost in the shuffle. As for offering an app wrapper in the store, that would probably be appreciated by a lot of folks. If it’s effectively the same thing as the PWA, I wouldn’t bother personally since I already have the PWA and it works.
Noun Sense is great! Sent it to a friend and he seems hooked too.
Is there a way to set your name? The top right menu just says "Guest" for me, but it also has the option to log out. Did I create a user named "Guest"? 😂
Thanks for checking it out! Really glad you liked it. You'll need to create an account to set your name. Then you can also add friends via their friend code and see them on the leaderboard each day.
When you first started, you probably clicked 'Continue as Guest' so you don't have a "regular" account. The "guest" account was mostly made as an easy way to get started and try it out without giving email. If you think you'll play on a regular basis, the best experience is with an account. (Keeping track of streak, adding friends, cross browser progress)
I am currently working on a guest -> account conversion flow so you don't lose your progress and that will allow cross device play/progress rather than being tied to a single browser instance.
Out of curiosity, is creating an account a deal breaker for you?
Right now, the only sign up options are Google/Discord. I also have username/pwd but that's a bit clunkier for the daily game flow with needing to confirm email etc. This is also a shared account system with my main site gametje.com which has a vastly different style at the moment. I need to revamp a bit of the styling for emails/sign up pages in this context.
Are there other "social logins" you would prefer? Was looking into adding Sign in with apple and Meta.
Thanks again for trying it and for the feedback!
I'll keep an eye out for that! I really enjoy it and expect I'll keep playing.
I wouldn't have tried it if I had to make an account, but now I'd like one so my entire play history isn't just in FF mobile's LocalStorage or whatever.
I would probably use the username/password signup, but might use the Google option if I was feeling especially lazy.
Thanks for making it! 😊
Hi, I just updated the game to include the guest -> account conversion flow. At the moment it still only supports google/discord. Username/password with a guest migration will take a bit more work. (Mostly from a UI perspective). You'll get a reminder after completing game or you can use the 'claim account' button hidden in the menu in the top right (the user menu).
Hopefully Google or Discord will work for you if thats acceptable. It took a fair amount of work on the backend to get it all right with ensuring no data was lost and merging data if someone already had an existing account. I tried to find/test/fix all the unhappy paths (like cancelling in the middle) so it should be good to go...
Wow, thanks! I'll try it out now!
Edit: it worked! If that was you who friend-requested me sorry but I accidentally removed you after adding. The "remove" button was cut off visually and I didn't realize what I was clicking. Also friends show up as a GUID so idk who it was that requested me lol.
I had a bug where guests could request friends... so it could be related to that. If they are "real account" they should have proper names attached to them. So it's possible someone requested via a guest...
If you like, you can add me as a friend with this link: https://daily.gametje.com/friends?addFriendCode=NHT7NV. (no pressure, not trying to Tom from Myspace you :-D )
Oh this is exactly my kind of game! Thanks for making and sharing. Scored 833 on today’s, not a bad first try!
I got 894 it was fun!
This is really fun, thanks for posting it! I've tried to come up with ideas for word games but was stumped and started to think all the ideas had already been made into games, it's great to know that other people don't have this problem :-)
What I couldn't figure out is whether it's a good thing to get a high score, or a bad thing (i.e. does getting a low score actually mean you're more creative with your language instinctually? It'd be fun to play the game in reverse)
P.S. I think the answers should be shown immediately... I suspected (and confirmed) that LLMs are very good at the game, so if somebody's wanting to cheat that's probably the easiest way to do it
Thanks for trying! I am working on showing the top 3 answers for each word after you complete the game. You'll be able to toggle a small "drawer" by tapping on each row or all at once with a toggle near the bottom.
Point taken about cheating. Cheaters gonna cheat.
Funny enough I have an admin only feature to trigger ChatGPT to play a round. It acts like a regular user so you can add it as a friend etc. I find it amusing and like seeing it but I know some people are very AI averse so I haven't added it for everyone to see. I've excluded it from the averages as well.
Regarding your comment about good/bad thing about getting a low score. Obviously the main gameplay loop is to guess the most common nouns. In its current state, you could guess bogus answers 3 times (with the retry logic) to get 0pts on each adjective.
That said, it would be interesting to have a spinoff or another mode where you need to guess a real answer in the dataset with the lowest frequency.
There's a multiplayer version coming that will be more family feud style, so there you can let your creativity shine by racking up a bunch of nouns that other players have not guessed yet. Still toying with making it teams vs teams, fully cooperative, or free for all.
Just updated it now. Now you can see the top 3 of each adjective. You can use the bulk toggle at the bottom by the scores or tap each row after the game is completed.
Hopefully that helps!
I like Waffle and OneWordSearch (same creator)
Bracket City is an interesting one and got acquired very quickly. It's like a crossword in paragraph form.
Squaredle - I've subscribed for two years now. Daily regular and express puzzles, and harder weekly and member weekly puzzles. It's pretty great and free but the sub is worth it for me.
The Daily Spell a fantasy new headline a day in the form of a drop quote puzzle
Daily Akari is my personal favorite daily logic game. It’s effectively a slightly simpler version of Sudoku (at least in terms of solving techniques) which is nice since it usually only takes a few minutes.
Konkr is technically a turn based strategy, but it's so simple that it really feels like a strategy-puzzle hybrid, at least in the small maps. If you know the old shareware game Slay, this is an updated clone that runs in the browser, works well on the phone and is free.
Not web based, but if you have an Android phone, try Tower of the Sorcerer. It's a port of a puzzle game from 1995 that's quite brilliant (literally started a whole genre of games) and can be played in small batches as well (save anywhere anytime), though it is somewhat addictive. It's basically about resource management - you spend health in fights with creatures that block the way, improve attack and defense in various ways to reduce the health spent and decide where to spend limited numbers of keys for locked doors. It has a few special items or monsters here and there, and the goal is to get through 50 floors - each of it is small enough to fit on a phone screen.
Not the same as “Squaredle” from DefinitelyNotAFae but I like the Daily and Weekly Squardle boards.
I also play Waffle as listed above, and Wordle on Discord where my own sweet sainted mother viciously kicks my ass nearly every day.
Heh, I wonder what Josh Wardle thinks of all these people riffing on his own last name which he named Wordle after…
I don't know. Maybe he could file a trademark if he hasn't already and go hardcore litigious like Tetris Holding, LLC. You can't name a falling tetromino style puzzle game anything-tris or you'll be getting a cease and desist and possibly a lawsuit from the owners of Tetris.
The official Gnome games version of the game is called Quadrapassel and never once mentions the "-tris" phrase anywhere. It used to be called "Gnometris" but, uh...
Anyway, I digress. Maybe he could do that?
He sold Wordle to the NYT a while ago
Maybe the NYT will get litigious. I hope not. Otherwise I gotta rename Jerkle, the game that changes the answer every time you get too close unless you answer it outright. (I kid, that would be a hard game to make.)
Big fan of flagdoku
Quite honestly this seems like a good place to drop the Northernlion dles thread
I am overwhelmed by the response! I am excited to look at each of these suggestions. Thank you everyone for taking the time to respond. These will provide many hours of amusement during those long months at sea.
Not exactly logic puzzles but:
Daily format geography quiz: https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/
Daily format animal guessing game based on linnean classifications: https://metazooa.com/ (there’s a plantae one too)
Not daily and not a logic puzzle but my current addiction, color memorization and matching: https://dialed.gg/
I enjoyed Euclidea back in the day. Start playing here. Interactive geometric puzzles.
youtube channel cracking the cryptic always posts a free web version of their daily puzzles for you to solve on your own before you watch them do the solve. got hooked on this channel during the pandemic and i've cherished it ever since. i linked an example below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FNc6mO0l5o the solve
https://sudokupad.app/vjn0pdempw the puzzle. there is a button to show the puzzles rules
My favorite is probably https://www.cinenerdle2.app/, which is a movie trivia tile swapping game. There are a bunch of modes now, but "Original" is still the best. It also allows for user-generated puzzles, which are fun to put together. Mine are boring, but are mostly comprised of my favorite movies, so I like them.
https://fivefold.ca/ is also great. It's a small sudoku, but with extra rules. It's got great keyboard controls and is pretty self contained. Good way to get a 1 min break from work.
The only one I've stuck with is https://www.geogridgame.com/
It's a 3x3 grid where each row and column has a category such as "population over 20 million" or "flag with a star/sun", and you have to fill out countries based on the 2 categories that apply to each square. There's a sort of high score aspect to it, since you get fewer points (lower percentage, higher rarity = better) for picking a country that other people have not chosen as frequently. But if you risk too much then you perhaps fail, and if you miss a square it is the equivalent of 100 points.
I like it because it forces you to learn trivia about countries, like Pakistan's capital is not the most populated city, Democratic Republic of the Congo has a border on the Atlantic Ocean, or in Indonesia they drive on the left.
My friends and I have stuck with Cinematrix for a bit now. Lots of fun if you're a film nerd like us.
I have a question: I've lost the link to a well-designed daily game. A week or two ago I came across a daily geography game that was about guessing a city. You start with a hint that it's some distance from a given city. After every guess you'd get a hint in the form of another city, and its distance to the target city.
I only played it once: it started by saying the city was, I forget, 1000 km west of Rome - something like that. And then after a few guesses I found that it was Porto, Portugal.
There are no graphics in the game, just text-based hints and guesses.
Does anyone recognize this game? I've tried various game-listing sites but can't find it.
Try going through the geography games here?
H/t to @protium above
I'm loving the suggestions here! I'll add the following:
Thinky Games recently published a season of daily puzzles which I quite liked. Light, quick, fun, mainly sudoku-adjacent and line-type. I believe they are working on getting the second season out soon.
Catfishing is a daily Wikipedia based guessing game. Basically, your task is to guess the title of an article based on its categories. There are ten articles every day. Some are easier, some harder. Once you have attempted all ten, you see how you rank. My only criticisms are that I'd prefer something like 6 articles instead of 10, and the articles selected are quite US centric, or at least focused on the western world.
In recent years, I have fallen in love with cryptic crosswords. It can take a bit of effort to start the journey, but once you get through the first hurdles, they can become addictive if you enjoy word based logic puzzles. If you need help to start, this article gives the basics, and I would strongly recommend watching a video or two from the Cracking the Cryptic YouTube channel, which features a tough cryptic crossword solve every Friday: here's the latest as of writing. After that, Minute Cryptic can be a good daily clue practice, while The Guardian's Quick cryptic and Quiptic are nice free weekly cryptics for beginners, as is The Observer's Everyman, but I often have issues with their website. Outside of those, many publications, including The Guardian, publish daily cryptics and typically the difficulty increases, with Mondays being the easiest and Fridays the most difficult. If you get stuck, as you probably will at the beginning, Fifteensquared offers solutions and other help.
I made Kyudosudoku. I've been meaning to make it a “puzzle a day” thing but I haven't gotten around to that yet. Maybe some day. In the meantime, you can just play one random puzzle per day, whatever comes up on your front page.