5 Wordle alternatives to tide you over until midnight rolls around

So, Wordle is having a moment, huh?

If you haven’t played the daily word game, you must. You get six tries to guess a five-letter word. Each guess tells you if you have a letter in the right place, a correct letter in the wrong place, or a wrong letter.

Each guess is supposed to get you closer, except for the time the word was “knoll” and everyone on the internet lost their collective minds.

But I digress. The worst part about Wordle (which is itself perfection) is that you can only play it once a day! How are we all supposed to fill the other 23 hours and 55 minutes?! Here are some fun Wordle-like options to scratch that itch.

Wordle Archive

Once you’re hooked on Wordle, your first stop should be the Wordle Archive, which is not maintained by Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle, but by another kind soul, Devang Thankkar.

It’s Wordle, except you can keep playing it. You’ll get (February 10, 2022)’s puzzle each time you load it up, but the only way to fly is the Random button, which plops you smack-dab in the middle of a long-ago Wordle.

Lewdle

It’s once daily, like Wordle, except only naughty words. And let me tell you: Thinking of only naughty words instead of all words is actually a bit more challenging.

But that’s Lewdle for you. It’s an unabashed Wordle clone that, to its credit, goes out of its way to let you know about and direct you to the actual Wordle site.

It also helpfully (?) turns your winning word into a Google-able link just in case you want to learn more about it.

Lingo

OK, hear me out. Online Lingo may look, feel, and play like a Flash game from the ’90s, but it’s got it where it counts.

Imagine Wordle, except . . . possible words can be five or six letters, you’re given the first letter for free (plus another random one if you play the six-letter version), you only get five guesses, you’re allowed to guess nonsensical words—and when you guess incorrectly, the corresponding keys aren’t grayed out on the keyboard.

Oh, and you can play as many times as you want. Apparently, it used to be a game show!

Word Master

So, you’ve aced Wordle. You’ve memorized Wordle Archive. You’re not interested in Lewdle. Lingo is too confusing. Can I interest you in Word Master?

This is a Wordle clone through and through—except with a magnificent “Play Again” button that loads up new puzzles, beckoning you each time you solve one to try your hand at another.

It’s also got three difficulty levels—easy, normal, and hard—to Wordle’s normal and hard modes. Easy lets you guess any combination of letters, even if it doesn’t make sense; normal forces you to guess valid words; and hard forces your next guess to use only hints from previous guesses.

Free Daily Crosswords

Let your hair down and print—yes, print—a crossword puzzle out on paper, which you’ll then need to do by hand using something known as a pen or pencil.

One of my favorite sites of all time (and I’m not that old) is Free Daily Crosswords, which is pretty much just like it sounds: an archive of daily, free, printable crossword puzzles.

The puzzles themselves are Goldilocks-like—not too hard, not too easy—and they open up as standard, nicely formatted PDF files.

If you’re dead set against printing out stuff like this, here’s a trick: You can use an Apple Pencil-compatible iPad to open a puzzle up in Safari, share it to the Books app, then turn on the notes function to fill in the squares with your stylus.