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Four daily word puzzles, set out like a morning paper

Each asks for something different: a meaning, a swap, a swipe, a hunch. The columns below show how the boards look, how a first try goes and where the catches sit.

A folded newspaper, a coffee cup and a pencil on a wooden desk in morning light — Illustration for the morning edition

What a daily word puzzle is

A daily word puzzle puts the same board in front of everybody on the same day. You get a run at it, the answer stays hidden until you find it or give up, and afterwards you can compare notes with a neighbour without spoiling anything. The shared board is the whole point.

The genre has a few habits. Some games hand you letters and want words. Others hold back one word and score each guess by closeness. A few give you every letter and ask you to put them in order. Squaredle belongs to the first group, Contexto and Semantle to the second, Waffle to the third.

Rounds are short enough for a tea break, and the pace is yours. What differs is the texture: whether you finish feeling clever, lost or just stubborn.

New to all of this? The genre guide lists the vocabulary, and Play well covers pacing.

Meaning, ranked

Contexto

Type a word and Contexto answers with a position. The secret word is number 1, and every guess lands somewhere in a ranking built from how words are used across real texts. Low numbers mean close in usage.

Niche: Word association by rank
Round: One secret word, unlimited guesses
Modes: Daily game, previous games, Unlimited
Ads and accounts: Sponsored slots around the board, a Remove ads button and an account button on the home page

Good Every guess returns something you can compare at once: a position and a bar that changes colour as you close in.

Worth knowing The FAQ says closeness follows how words are used online, not strictly what they mean, so some neighbours will look odd.

Play Contexto ↗Read the column

Four guesses listed with their positions, one highlighted as the latest — Four guesses ranked, newest highlighted. Screenshot: Daydash

Seven guesses listed by position, with a green bar beside the closest one — Seven guesses, a green bar leading. Screenshot: Daydash

Nine guesses with orange and pink bars of different lengths — Nine guesses, bars longer toward the top. Screenshot: Daydash

Letters, rearranged

Waffle

A grid of letters woven into words across and down. The letters arrive scrambled, you drag them into place, and tiles change colour to show whether a letter sits where it belongs. The corner of the page counts your remaining swaps.

Niche: Rearranging letters in a woven grid
Round: One grid per day, with a limited swap count shown on screen
Modes: Daily Waffle, Deluxe Waffle, Number Waffle, Waffle Royale, an archive
Ads and accounts: Ads on the page, a supporter route through ko-fi.com, an account area in the menu

Good The board hands you every letter, so the task is placement. Colour feedback arrives after each swap.

Worth knowing The FAQ says stats live in a cookie on the device, so clearing browser data can wipe them unless an account is set up.

Play Waffle ↗Read the column

A scrambled letter grid with green and yellow tiles and a swaps-remaining counter — Daily grid before the first swap. Screenshot: Waffle Studio Ltd

A second daily grid with different letters and the same swap counter — A second day, new letters. Screenshot: Waffle Studio Ltd

A larger grid from the Deluxe Waffle with 25 swaps remaining — Deluxe Waffle, a larger grid. Screenshot: Waffle Studio Ltd

Words, swiped out

Squaredle

A small square of letters and a counter above it. You swipe through neighbouring tiles to spell words and the counter climbs. A shorter Express board sits alongside the daily one.

Niche: Word search in a square of letters
Round: One daily grid with a words-found counter
Modes: Today's puzzle, Express, archive and classics, special puzzles
Ads and accounts: Ads on the page, a paid membership called Squaredle Squared that removes them, an account area

Good Typing a word on a physical keyboard and pressing Enter works as well as swiping, per the FAQ.

Worth knowing Words come from NWL2023, a North American list, and lowercase English words only, so check spellings against it.

Play Squaredle ↗Read the column

The daily grid of sixteen letter tiles with a zero-words counter above it — Daily grid, nothing found yet. Screenshot: Squaredle LLC

The Express board, a smaller grid of nine tiles — Express, the smaller board. Screenshot: Squaredle LLC

The practice grid at the start, with a prompt to swipe a short word — The practice grid at the start. Screenshot: Squaredle LLC

A hidden word, by numbers

Semantle

Each guess comes back with a similarity score, and once you are within a thousand words of the secret one, a proximity note appears. The scores come from word2vec, a technique that places words by how they turn up together in text.

Niche: Guessing a hidden word through numeric similarity
Round: One secret word per day, unlimited guesses
Modes: Daily game, Semantle Junior, archive, Teams
Ads and accounts: Ads on the page and an account for saving stats

Good Hint and Give Up buttons sit under the guess box, so a stuck run has a way out.

Worth knowing The FAQ calls the game hard and points to Semantle Junior for an easier route in.

Play Semantle ↗Read the column

Three guesses listed with similarity scores and cold or far labels — Three guesses with similarity scores. Screenshot: David Turner

Six guesses sorted by similarity with the newest highlighted — Six guesses sorted by score. Screenshot: David Turner

Eight guesses sorted by similarity, all labelled cold except one far — Eight guesses, scores climbing. Screenshot: David Turner

The four side by side

What you do, what you get back, and what sits around the board
Game	Core move	Feedback	Rounds	Ads and accounts
Contexto	Place a word on a ranked list	A position number and a coloured bar	Daily game, no stated limit on guesses	Sponsored slots, optional ad removal, account button
Waffle	Drag letters into their correct cells	Green, yellow and plain tiles after each swap	One grid a day, a set number of swaps	Ads, supporter route, optional account
Squaredle	Swipe or type words from adjacent letters	A rising words-found counter and a progress bar	One daily grid plus Express	Ads, paid membership that removes them, account area
Semantle	Guess a single word and read its similarity	A similarity number and a proximity note once close	Daily game, no stated limit on guesses	Ads, account for stats

How the four were picked

Its own address
The game lives on a site of its own, not inside a portal full of other titles.
A board you can show
The playing field can be pictured without giving away the day's answer.
One puzzle a day
Everybody gets the same board, which suits a morning habit.
A browser tab is enough
It opens from a link and can be tried at once.

Questions readers ask

Do the Play buttons lead to the games themselves?

Yes. Each one opens the game's own site in a new tab. Those sites are run by their developers, and this site has no hand in how they work.

Will the day's answer be shown here?

No. Pictures show boards and guess lists in progress, and the text avoids spelling out solutions.

Do I need an account to try them?

Each game opens onto a board. Accounts exist mainly for saving stats or buying extras, and each game page describes what its own site offers.

Why are a few boards shown half-played?

An empty field says little. A board with guesses typed in shows how feedback looks, which is what a newcomer wants to know.

What does the commission note in the footer mean?

If a visitor uses certain links, the site may earn a commission. It makes no difference to the price on the game's own site.

Where do the desk and coffee pictures come from?

They are generated illustrations, and the About page says so. They carry no game content.