Staying Fit
If you start your day by plugging five-letter words into a grid and waiting for green, gray and yellow boxes to pop up, you’re not alone. Wordle, the free viral word game, has hooked millions of users, each trying to guess the daily word and then often sharing their results on social media.
Kelli Dunlap, a clinical psychologist and adjunct professor in the American University Game Lab, isn’t surprised that Wordle became a global phenomenon, noting that the game’s digital format and “one and done” element allow you to play anywhere. Posting results on social media creates a feeling of connectedness, and some studies have found that word games can improve memory and cognition for older adults.
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“Puzzles feel like productive play,” Dunlap says. “One of the coolest things about word games is that anyone can do them.”
While some users are drawn to Wordle precisely because it offers just one daily puzzle, others want more opportunities to test the pattern recognition and deductive and spatial reasoning skills it takes to solve puzzles. Not surprisingly, Wordle’s popularity has spawned a number of similar games designed to test your knowledge of everything from words to geography and numbers.
Consider adding these 18 free web-based games to your daily routine.
1. Absurdle:
Unlike Wordle, which has one correct answer (and all players are trying to guess the same word each day), Absurdle is designed to make it almost impossible to solve the puzzle. How? The algorithm chooses words that are as dissimilar from the user’s first guess as possible, and the correct answer changes with each subsequent guess until there is only one possible word left.
2. Artle:
From the National Gallery of Art, this game gives players four tries to identify a mystery artist by looking at pictures of four different works. The pieces shown come from the museum’s collection of paintings, sculptures, photos and more.
3. Crosswordle:
Like Wordle, this game uses green, yellow and gray boxes to guide you toward the solution. But instead of a single word, Crosswordle serves up two related words that cross over each other (similar to a crossword puzzle). Players are given a clue after each guess.
