JThe New York Times’ acquisition of Wordle has left followers of the hit word-guessing game fearful that it might end up — like the newspaper’s crossword puzzles and other puzzles — locked behind a paywall, despite assurances from the Times to the contrary.

While another game is unlikely to achieve the viral success of Wordle, there are free browser-based alternatives to quiz you while you sip your morning coffee.

Clones and spin-offs

Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle, said he liked the plethora of Wordle clones that have sprung up in the wake of his game, though his fans have been less impressed with apps trying to cash in on his work. Most clones copy Wordle’s current philosophy: they cost nothing to play, run in a browser, and are ad-free.

Variations range from simple copies (often without Wordle’s one game per day limit and with additional difficulty options) to versions in other languagesincluding Chinese and Tamil. There are also thematic versions, with big words, queer culture and Pokemon.

Then there are the really weird ones – like Letterlewhich asks you to guess a single letter, Absurdself-described as “Contradictory Wordle”, and word.rodeo, which lets you create custom challenges for a friend. My group chat is obsessed with Numbin which players reverse engineer a mathematical equation, and Quordlewhere you play four Wordle games at once.

Other traditional games

The New York Times has a handful of well-designed minimalist games available outside of its paywall, including Mini-crosswords and spelling beealthough the latter asks you to subscribe once you’ve guessed enough words.

play four by Merriam-Webster is a spin on the mini-crossword puzzle that offers a day-old solution to the old standbys of online Sudoku and my personal obsession, Nonograms (better known to Nintendo fans as Picross).

Of course, there are always the various offers from the Guardian online or on iOS Where android – although the apps require a paid subscription.

Wikitrivia

This game asks players to place random historical facts in chronological order. Wikitrivia starts with a historical event already on the board. You then start drawing maps and placing them on a timeline in relation to other in-game events. Was Australia discovered before or after the founding of the Indian stock market? When did the Regency period end in relation to the birth of Catherine de Medici?

You can make three mistakes before the game is over, with the score showing how many cards you managed to place correctly before you got it wrong. Sharing your results is possible but, given the random nature of each race, it seems somewhat unnecessary.

The good thing about Wikitrivia, as The Guardian’s Alyx Gorman says, is that you feel smart – you have to have some knowledge of when things happened, at least relative to other things, and having this knowledge confirmed (even trivial) is a satisfaction. little experience. This also has its drawbacks: how could I have known that Rashi, a French rabbi and commentator, was born in 1040? It’s trivial for you.

GeoGuessr

Have you ever used Google Street View? GeoGuessr drops you in a random location on Earth – at least, the parts of Earth that have been mapped by Google – and challenges you to guess where you are in the world, giving you more points the closer your guess is to the brand. You will have to create an account though, which is a bit annoying.

In classic mode, you can wander around a bit, with five guesses to score as many points as possible, starting a new location with each guess. There are a bunch of different modes that restrict you to different countries, or only place you near landmarks, and the ‘daily challenge’ feature replicates Wordle’s group-one-day nature.

The genius of GeoGuessr is that it makes you feel like a detective, even if what you’re doing is the most basic detective work imaginable. Signs in particular are invaluable in determining the main language in your mystery location, but other contextual clues – the forms of architecture, flora and fauna, which side of the road the cars are driving on, etc. – activate your brain in a way most others. puzzle games do not.

Sure, sometimes GeoGuessr just drops you off on a long, barren stretch of highway next to terrain you’ve never seen; you’ll just have to guess blindly and hope for the best. On a free account, you can only play for five minutes every 15 minutes, but that’s more than enough to get your daily fix.