The best online games and puzzles to play every day in 2024

One of the The New York Times’ latest word games online, Communication it was an instant hit when it was first introduced. The game presents a grid of 16 cards. Each usually has a name written on it but this can also be a single letter, number or, in the case of the April 1st game, an emoji.

The aim is to find out how the cards can be divided into four groups. There is only one correct answer, and the groups tend to have different difficulties, from the yellow group (for example, the elements of metal or types of flowers) to the purple (nicknames of philosophers or what the letter “O” can mean. ).

There is no timer, but you can only make three wrong guesses before you lose and the answer is revealed. I’ve played every day since the game launched and while it’s always nice to get a perfect game with no mistakes, having a long winning streak is more satisfying. My best so far is 32 wins in a row. – Kris Holt, Contributing Reporter

Framed it is one of the first and the best Words clones. The idea is simple enough: You’ll see up to six stills from the movie from the most obscure to the most obvious, and your job is to figure out which movie it’s from. You get one guess at a time.

The answer field has a handy auto-complete function, so if you don’t know the full name of the movie you can still win. The built-in stats tracker works too. Framed it’s a way for movie buffs to show off their knowledge, or maybe get egg on their face when they somehow fail to see one of the most famous movies of all time. It’s fun anyway, especially for the Letterboxd enthusiasts out there. -KH

Boxing Game tasks you with guessing the five highest-grossing movies on a given weekend. You see each film’s distributor and total revenue automatically, but you can use the score bank to reveal additional clues, such as its lead actors, director, tagline and the like. The goal is to guess each flick with as little information as possible – though, really, this isn’t the kind of thing where “winning” is the point. (At least, that’s what I tell myself.)

Instead, for movie oddities and people who spend a lot of time on Letterboxd, the fun is in discovering just how deep your well of movie memories runs. Most of the time, it won’t be far at all. Some days, you may be surprised at how easily you remember Gone in 60 Seconds despite only seeing it once in the last 20 years. If nothing else, this is all a great way to brainstorm ideas for your next movie night. – Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter

Costcodle it’s like a cross between Words again The price is right. Each day it gives you a different product from Costco’s massive food database, and you get six tries to guess its price. You can whip it up in seconds, so it’s mostly empty calories, but it’s a fun way to check how much information you’re keeping while browsing the aisles of your grocery store. You wouldn’t think you might enjoy guessing how much four bags of organic brussel sprouts cost, but that’s the time-killing power of the internet. — JD

Here’s what’s so different from the other entries on this list. Coffee Golf actually a video game (free on iOS and Android). As the name suggests, you can finish your daily run while drinking a hot morning drink. Every day, there’s a new five-hole course set up in an open area for you to play. You can finish it in any way, but the goal is to score as few points as possible, so planning your route is as important as nailing your shot.

I enjoy playing Coffee Golf at the beginning of my day because it gets my brain working in different ways than playing word based games on this list. I have to look around the course and strategize a bit before starting my round. It’s been a fun addition to my daily routine, and it sure beats doomscrolling when I had my first cup of joe. -KH

While it may not help you become fluent in the language itself, Duolingo is a very useful way to learn useful phrases just by logging in and taking a two-minute lesson every day. The more you practice, the better, obviously. I think my French would be a lot better if I did more than one lesson a day, but there’s not much I can do about it if I get bored, which happens quite often. (I he can pay for the premium plan, but eh.)

Duolingo’s gamification helps make it addictive enough to come back to it every day – the many, many emails and notifications you’ll get if you don’t turn them off will push you back in too. All of that helped me keep a streak of over 600 days, with maybe a dozen freezers used in that time. (Hot tip: if you miss a lesson, you can change the date on your phone or computer to go back to the previous day and help keep your streak.)

Duolingo can’t really compete with more intensive language learning methods like full immersion or taking a class a few times a week. But as a way to help you brush up on some of the basics before taking a trip to Paris or Quebec, or to refresh your memory on all the Spanish you may have forgotten since high school, it’s a decent option that doesn’t require a lot of time. investment. And, hey, it can be a lot of fun, especially if the app lets you play a mini-game instead of translating basic text. -KH

The New York Times Mini Crossword was 10 years old in 2024. While many fans of the newspaper’s main crossword puzzle turn their noses up at Mini, the puzzle is difficult for those who like online word games. It has a strong community of fans, many of whom try to run on it as fast as possible.

The Mini has a five-by-five grid most days with between three and five tracks on each side. The puzzles on Saturdays and sometimes on other days are larger, usually with a seven by seven grid. It’s a crossword, after all, so it doesn’t need much explanation. Thankfully, it’s not uncommon to see a rebus (which allows the builder to fit a word or several letters into a single square) on the Mini.

I’m trying to beat a normal puzzle in less than a minute. There aren’t many better feelings in daily gaming than when you get all the Across clues on the first pass. My personal record stands at 14 seconds. How about yours? -KH

Trade he belongs to the clones of the third or fourth order that he is loosely related to Words for the same purpose of naming false advertising. For this and other reasons, I love it. It only shows relationships Words so far as both involve guessing things and then getting a vague answer about the accuracy of the guess.

Trade – a game that has been addictive to me for a while and sent several members of my friends’ Discord server – it only provides gross domestic product, and a colorful display of what types of products make up that GDP (it’s kind of like hard drive disc space analysts .) Where guesswork Words they are awarded for confirming the presence and possible condition of the letters, Trade it gives the distance, and approximate direction, of the correct state from the wrong one.

Sometimes the solutions are downright stupid: I mean, honestly, who but the estimated 2,100 people who live there have ever heard of Norfolk Island? But even the failure of confusion leads to some good learning – for example, the existence of the self-governing Australian territory of Norfolk Island. — Avery Ellis, Deputy Editor

Now for something different to add to your rotation. Pile-Up Poker is a relatively new kid on the block, but it’s already the most played game on Puzzmo (Really Bad Chess, SpellTower) platform every day.

The goal is to place as many high-scoring poker hands as possible on a four-by-four grid. For each of the four draws you get in each game, you get five cards and you can place four of them anywhere on the grid. The remaining card goes to the discard pile. Each row and column counts as a hand, as do the four corners. If all nine of those apply, the discard pile counts as a hand as well. The more valid hands you play, the more your multiplier stacks up to improve your total score, which is given as a dollar value. You can play up to five games (or deals) per day.

You can compete for the top spot on the leaderboards, but there’s a neat social aspect to it Pile-Up Poker again. The Puzzmo team has been rolling out exciting additions as players collectively reach milestones in the poker pot. The next target is $1 trillion in total winnings. -KH

A true titan of daily online games, players have made 4.8 billion attempts to solve it Words in 2023. A game, you can play in it The New York Times website and application Games for free, follows a simple format. You have six chances to guess a five-letter word. Gray letters are not in the name. If the letter is yellow, it is in the name but you have it in the wrong place. The green letters are where they should be.

Making it easy to share an emoji-friendly color grid of these predictions in group chats and social media has helped Words incredibly popular. A large wave of clones soon appeared, many of which appeared in this list, but Words is something it’s still a fun way to give your brain a quick workout every day. -KH