In 2021, Wordle was released to the public, snapped up by The New York Times and took users and guests by storm. The game’s premise was straightforward, but challenging to solve — simply guess the correct 5 letter word.
The reason this format felt unique to early players is because everyone around the world playing that day, were all working towards guessing the same word!
That’s right — Wordle only updates every 24 hours. This created an environment of friendly competition, with users sharing results with friends, family and even communities dedicated to the game.
Now, as much as Wordle was the top dog (and still hosts a bunch of players today), I tend to play different daily games these days – with some even inspired by Wordle.
If you’re looking for something new or maybe never got into word games, I have some suggestions for you!
The top dogs
Bandle
If you’re a music lover like me, Bandle is a fun music based game that works by introducing instruments at each round to slowly reveal the entire song. You have 6 tries to guess the song, with a new instrument revealed on each try. Here’s a breakdown of a random day, as an example:
The final part of the song is revealed at round 5, and if you still need that extra help, round 6 will give you a hint to the song’s title.
As of writing this blog, I have guessed played 435 Bandle rounds, and yes, I’m going to flex my stats of a guess rate of 98.6%. It can be quite challenging when the song is broken down, and the par will show you just how hard today’s guess may be.
The creator is still working on the game, introducing extra song packs such as musicals or television themes to get extra out of your Bandle – and he’s super active in the Bandle subreddit!
I shed a tear the day Spotify announced they were closing Heardle after purchasing it about 9 months before. I distinctly remember coming back from a trip overseas where the game was blocked, only to be met with a closure notice. Ugh!
Luckily, to fill the hole that Heardle left in my heart, Guess The Audio found me — and it turns out it had popped up not long after Heardle left.
Guess The Audio is another music guessing game, only instead of revealing instruments, it slowly reveals a longer and longer clip of the real song. I’m not sure of the exact timings, but lets say the first clip is 1 second, if you miss that it goes to 2 seconds, so on and so forth.
I love this game! So much so, I am currently Ko-Fi subscriber to ensure my stats are saved on all devices. I have been called a freak because of how often I guess the songs correctly in the first round.
Another pro for this one, is that although a new game is out daily, you can revisit the archive and play old rounds while other games tend to only let you play today’s and today’s only.
Gamedle
If you play video games, this one is for you! Gamedle hosts 4 daily games: Classic, Artwork, Keywords and Guess, meaning you get more variety all in the same place.
Classic has you guessing the game’s cover art while Artwork is where you guess the game from its promotional artwork. Keywords gives you a bunch of… keywords, starting from niche to more obvious to slowly hint at what the game could be.
Lastly, Guess breaks down a game by its categories, such as platforms, genres and publisher and each guess guides you to how close you were in these key categories until you solve the game.
The gamemodes increase in difficulty, with Classic being the easiest and Guess being the most difficult — but all present with a fun challenge. Keywords and Guess are especially fun to play with friends, as the difficulty is eased a bit more when collaborating with a group.
Connections
If you want to brag about your lateral thinking skills, connections is what you’re looking for. The game plays by giving you 16 seemingly random words, and you have to figure out how four of these words relate to each other, four times.
The words that are, ahem, connected to each other are increasingly difficult to solve. For example: Apple, Banana, Pear and Strawberries are all fruits but how does Butterfly, Domino, Halo and Placebo relate? (They all end in effect).
To make things harder, a red herring is often thrown in — for example with the fruits answer perhaps Apple was actually supposed to be used in the tech companies group and its just a coincidence so many fruits are in today’s game…
Connections can be quite daunting to start, but once you get the hang of thinking laterally, they tend to become easier to solve. Some days are more difficult than others, meaning that you may zip through today’s but be stumped tomorrow and that helps keep things fresh and fun.
Honourable mentions
These games may not be played daily by me, but are definitely worth the recommendation. Some games I return to when I have the time, while others in this list I am particularly bad at… but the premise is great (I’m looking at you PokeDoku).
The Mini
For those that like the challenge of a crossword but want to complete it in a fraction of the time, the New York Times has a daily mini crossword that can do just that. The Mini can be completed in about a minute, and you get a neat little jingle at the end too.
Crossclimb
Did you know LinkedIn has games now? Well Crossclimb is my favourite of the bunch and it feels like a unique take on a crossword and only usually takes me less than a minute to solve.
The aim is to solve the clues it gives you, with words only ever 4-5 letters long, then rearrange the words on the ladder into the correct order. In this example, you can see that BOARD turns to SCORE by changing a letter each time.‘
Framed
Calling all film nerds! In this game you are given a screenshot of a movie, and you have 6 guesses to figure out which movie it is – with screenshots becoming more obvious each time. Movies range from animated classics to niches international films.
Episode
Made by the same people that host Framed, Episode is a television show guessing game that’s updated weekly, rather than daily. It also gives players 10 chances to guess the show, with the first screenshot often being ridiculously ambiguous. (I’ll never forget the time I guessed Suits on a screenshot of B-roll footage of a random city scape and got it on 1).
PokeDoku
For you Pokémon fans, PokeDoku gives players a 9 x 9 grid with requirements on both the X and Y axis in order to solve it. Players then have to offer guesses on which Pokémon fits in both categories, with extra points rewarded to those that successfully guess a more niche Pokémon.
Something cool about PokeDoku is that sometimes the daily puzzle is created by a guest puzzle master, one notably being bbno$ last year.
Box Office Game
Think you know your box office stats? This game gives you the date of a box office weekend and your job is to guess what movies were running at that time. The only information you are provided in the beginning is the film’s gross and the distributor. Don’t worry, hints are available as you go to reveal information such as the starring cast, director, tagline and more – but it will affect your score outcome.
Whether you plan to play these games solo or compete against friends, I hope you’ve found some new favourite games to add into rotation.
If you have any other suggestions, feel free to comment them below as I’m always on the lookout on what to play on my coffee break!
What's Yappening? 
2 responses to “Daily Games to Play When You’re Sick of Wordle”
I do love all these ‘dles, but I feel like you are missing the magnum opus “Loldle.”
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Yeah, loldle is great if you’re not a league hater like me 💅
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