Games Like Wordle

Waffle gives you a waffle-shaped grid of six interlocking five-letter words, with all the letters already on the board but scrambled. Using Wordle-style green and yellow hints, you swap pairs of letters until every word is correct.

You have 15 swaps, and every swap you don’t use earns you a star, up to five. That turns each puzzle into a satisfying optimization problem: not just “can I solve it?” but “can I solve it perfectly?”

There’s also a bigger weekly Deluxe Waffle for when the daily one goes too quickly.

Quordle is Wordle times four: every guess you make is played on four boards at once, and you have nine guesses to solve all four words. Suddenly each opening word has to work hard across four puzzles.

It’s now run by Merriam-Webster, and it’s the most natural step up for Wordle players. The skills transfer directly, but the planning is much more interesting, especially in the endgame when you have to choose which board to commit to.

There are extra variants too, including a Sequence mode where the boards unlock one at a time, and a practice mode for unlimited games.

In Contexto you can guess any word, and each guess is ranked by how close it is in meaning to the secret word. Rank 1 is the answer; rank 4,000 means you’re miles off. With unlimited guesses, the game is all about following the trail of meaning.

It feels completely different from Wordle yet scratches the same itch: every guess gives you information, and the solve feels like your own clever deduction. Narrowing in from “animal” to “ocean” to “whale” is deeply satisfying.

Hints are there if you get stuck, and an archive of past puzzles means you can keep playing.

Krillion keeps Wordle’s best habit, one round a day with a score to share, but replaces letter guessing with fast trivia. You get seven open-ended prompts, such as “name a country whose name ends in O”, with a short timer for each.

The twist is that common answers barely count. The fewer other players who gave your answer, the deeper your “dive” goes. It turns general knowledge into a game of nerve: do you go safe, or go deep?

If Wordle has started to feel routine, Krillion is the best way to keep your daily ritual while giving a completely different part of your brain a workout.

Semantle came first: guess the secret word with each guess given a similarity score based on how words are used together. Get into the top 1,000 closest words and it tells you how close you are.

The numbers are less intuitive than Contexto’s simple ranking, and that’s the point. Semantle is hard, sometimes maddeningly so, and solving it feels like a real accomplishment.

Start with Contexto, and if you find yourself wanting more of a fight, graduate to Semantle.

Magnitudle takes Wordle’s daily rhythm and swaps words for numbers. Each day there’s a single real-world question, and you get one guess. You’re scored on how many orders of magnitude you’re off, so getting the scale right matters more than the exact figure.

It’s a lovely change of pace in a morning puzzle routine. The ×1K, ×1M and ×1B buttons make entering huge numbers painless, and a built-in notepad lets you do quick back-of-the-envelope math before you commit.

Once the daily question is done, you can play Size It Up, a weekly Survival mode, or the archive of past questions.

Nerdle swaps letters for numbers and operators: you have six tries to find an eight-character equation like 12+46=58, with the familiar green, purple and black feedback after every guess.

The constraint that every guess has to be a valid equation makes it more of a logic puzzle than it first appears. The deduction feels very Wordle, but with a fresh flavor.

There are variants for every taste, including Mini Nerdle for a quicker game and harder versions if you want to stretch.

Worldle shows you the outline of a country or territory. You get six guesses, and each wrong guess tells you how far away you are and in which direction the answer lies.

It’s the Wordle feedback loop transplanted to a map, and it works beautifully. Islands and small territories make for some fiendish days.

Once you solve it, bonus rounds (such as guessing the flag or capital) stretch the fun a little further.

Absurdle has no fixed answer. Every time you guess, it chooses whichever set of possible words keeps you guessing longest. You have unlimited guesses, and the goal is to corner it in as few as possible.

It turns Wordle on its head: instead of being lucky with a good guess, you have to force the game into a position where it can’t escape. It’s brilliant for anyone who has thought deeply about Wordle strategy.

There’s also a challenge mode where you have to reach a specific target word. It’s more of a curiosity than a daily habit, but a fascinating one.