Wordle has taken over social media. You can’t open Twitter or Facebook without seeing someone posting a set of gray, yellow and green blocks, a meme about the game, or debating the best starter word.
Wordle asks players to figure out a five-letter word in six or fewer guesses. After each guess the game shows gray blocks for wrong letters, yellow blocks for right letters in the wrong spot and green blocks for letters in the right space. It’s addictive, but after you solve the daily puzzle or use up all your guesses, you have to wait 24 hours to play again.
Here are eight other word-based games to play while you wait for your next Wordle.
Word Master
This Wordle remake gives you six tries to guess a five-letter word but with a slight tweak. Word Master uses gray, yellow and green blocks in the same way as the original. How is it different from Wordle? Word Master offers unlimited games so you don’t have to wait 24 hours.
You can play Word Master on any web browser.
Hello Wordl
Hello Wordl – another Wordle remake – gives you six tries to guess a word and uses the same colored blocks to track your progress. In addition to unlimited games, Hello Wordl also lets you change the number of letters in the word you’re guessing. Guess a four-letter word or use the in-game slider to go all the way up to an 11-letter word. You still get six chances to guess no matter how long a word is, though.
You can play Hello Wordl on any web browser.
Absurdle
Absurdle bills itself as the ‘adversarial version’ of Wordle. While Wordle nudges you in the right direction with each guess, Absurdle “is actively trying to avoid giving you the answer,” according to the game’s website. Absurdle doesn’t pick a word at the beginning of the game for the player to guess. Instead it uses the player’s guesses to narrow its list of words down in an effort to make the game go as long as possible. The final word might not even include a yellow letter from one of your earlier guesses either. You can guess as many times as you want which is helpful, and the best score you can get is four guesses. Have fun!
You can play Absurdle on any web browser.
Words With Friends
What kind of list of word games would this be without this classic? Words With Friends plays like a virtual game of Scrabble and is still popular more than a decade after its original launch. You and your opponent, either another person or the computer, get letters and make words on the board for points and whoever has the most points at the end wins.
You can download Words With Friends from the App Store, Play Store or play it in any web browser.
Word Forward
Word Forward is like Boggle but with power-ups and tools to help you. You play on a 5×5 board of letters and try to make words with those letters. When you make a word, the used letters vanish. You keep going until you clear the board. If you get stuck, you can use your power-ups and tools to eliminate some letters or jumble the board to replace the letters with new ones.
You can buy Word Forward from Apple’s App Store, the Google Play Store or Steam.
Wordscapes
Wordscapes is a mix between Boggle and a crossword puzzle. You are given a bank of letters at the bottom of your screen and there’s a crossword puzzle at the top. You make words with the letters in your bank and fill out the crossword with them. Once you complete the puzzle, you’re rewarded with a nice landscape picture.
You can download Wordscapes from the App Store or the Play Store.
Kitty Letter
Kitty Letter is a word game from the creators behind The Oatmeal and Exploding Kittens. In the game, you unscramble letters to make words which then turn into armies of cats. What do the cats do? They attack either the player or computer you are playing against, as well as defend your home. It’s an absurd tower defense game where your words create legions of cats willing to fight on your behalf.
You can download Kitty Letter from the App Store or the Play Store.
SpellTower
In SpellTower, letters rise from the bottom of the screen and you have to assemble words as quickly as possible. Each word you make eliminates the used letters, and if any letter reaches the top of your screen the game ends. It’s like Tetris in that regard. There are also 10 other game modes, including Search Mode, where you try to find the longest word using specific letters.
You can download SpellTower from the App Store or the Play Store. You can also get it on Apple Arcade. There’s a subscription fee for the service, but you’ll get this and other games ad-free and with in-app purchases already unlocked.
For more word game fun, check out CNET’s Wordle tips, the best Wordle jokes and how Apple pulled Wordle clones from the App Store.