13 Wordle Alternatives To Play When You’re Out Of Wordles

Wordle is a fun little word-puzzle game that’s taken the internet by storm, but it’s far from the first—or the best—when it comes to word-based puzzlers.

What I love about Wordle is its simplicity and elegance. The game is easy to learn but still provides a great challenge, especially when the answer is a less common word like ‘knoll.’

The game is free (for now) and remains blessedly ad-free, micro-transaction free and just fun for the fun of it. One of its best qualities? You only get one word a day, which keeps the game from taking up too much of your time.

Still, one word a day might leave some puzzlers wanting more. Or maybe you’ve simply found a new love for word games and want to share that love with friends and family.

The following list includes three categories:

I didn’t include any mobile games because most of the ones I tried, including the popular Wordscapes, were too bogged down with ads and other annoying monetization schemes.

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Let’s take a look at all these Wordle alternatives, how they work, and where to find them.

Wordle Spinoffs

There are a ton of Wordle spinoffs including the hilariously NSFW Lewdle, number games and even a transit-based Wordle wannabee, but I’ll stick to word-based games that are fun for the whole family.

Wordle Unlimited let’s you play Wordle to your heart’s content. As the game’s name implies, you get an unlimited number of words to guess per day. Fun for the addicts among us.

Word.Rodeo and My Wordle both allow you to create your own guess words and share them with friends. This adds a competitive element to the concept—or you can try out inside jokes.

Nerdle is a numbers-based version of Wordle. I know I said I’d stick to words but I had to throw a bone to the math nerds out there!

La Palabra is the Spanish language version of Wordle. It translates to “the word” and plays just like Wordle but with Spanish words instead of English words. A fun challenge for anyone learning to speak Spanish.

Dordle is really challenging. The screenshot above is from my first game of Dordle. Basically there are two words side-by-side but you only get six guesses to solve them both. You can see I entered “CLICK” for my first word, which got me an ‘L’ in the wrong spot on the left word and ‘ICK’ in the right spot on the right word. It still took me several more guesses to get to ‘QUICK’ and I just barely eked out a win with ‘FERAL’ on the left. Fun but tough!

New York Times Games

Now that the New York Times owns Wordle, we can expect the game to move over to the newspaper’s (admittedly very fun) games page any day now. The real question is whether it will remain free or get stuck behind the paywall.

The NYTs has a few other really fun games that you should check out when you get a chance. Here are a few that Wordlers will enjoy.

The Crossword Puzzle is for the elite word-puzzlers out there. The famous brain-teaser needs no introduction. You have a series of hints for words going down and across and have to solve, matching up letters and making your best guesses (and often looking up some trivia you have no clue about).

Crozzword Puzzle Mini gives players who don’t have the time or willpower to complete the main Crossword Puzzle a chance to solve something a bit less all-consuming. I just solved a mini today in just a couple minutes.

Spelling Bee is a shockingly challenging word puzzle game that gives you a honeycomb of letters and tasks you with creating words out of these letters. The twist is that you always have to use the central letter in every word.

In this image I’ve gotten stuck at just four words on Thursday’s puzzle, though I’m proud of both ‘havoc’ and ‘vacancy.’

Letter Boxed is a bit easier, but still a fun challenge. You have a square with three letters on each side of the square. You have to draw lines between letters to create words. You can’t connect consecutive letters on the same side, and you have to start the next word with whatever letter you finished the previous word. The goal is to use every letter with six or fewer words.

This one was tough, but I managed in just four words. I’m pretty happy with ‘dahlia.’ That English degree is really paying dividends.

Board Games And Timeless Classics

Long ago, in a distant age shrouded in mystery, there were no computers and phones were attached to the wall. If someone suggested you “play a game on your phone” they’d be laughed out of the room. What does that even mean? Play a game on your phone.

But there remains something special and exciting about actual tabletop games—board games, card games, roleplaying games—that you can’t really replicate with video games or mobile games. There’s a social aspect to these next games that makes them really wonderful.

Mastermind

Mastermind is probably the game most similar to Wordle out of all of these despite not being a word game at all. One player sets up a row of colored pegs behind a screen. The other player guesses the color and order these pegs are placed in by placing row after row of guesses. The first player will indicate whether the guesses are correct or not by placing black and white pegs along the side of these guesses indicating “correct color in the correct spot or correct color in the wrong spot”—but it’s harder than Wordle because you don’t know which peg is which!

Banangrams

Bananagrams takes the concept behind Scrabble and makes it into a real-time game that tests not just your vocabulary, but your speed and adaptability. The words you make aren’t ever static. You can change them as you go, as you get new letters and are forced to make new combinations. It’s a lot more intense than Scrabble and just as fun.

Scrabble

Scrabble definitely needs to be included in this list given its one of the most famous and popular word games of all time. You’re given letters and have to make words based on those letters. While Bananagrams gives each player their own grid to work with, Scrabble is played with just one board and one set of words.

Scattergories

Scattergories is a fun competitive game that blends a bit of randomness, a ticking clock and your vocabulary skills into a game that can be played with teams of all sizes. You can even play by yourself. Basically you roll the dice and try to come up with as many words that fit a specific category as possible before the time runs out.

Boggle

Boggle is kind of like the popular mobile game Wordscapes except no ads and it’s completely random. You have the little letter blocks and they get all shaken around and form totally different possible word combinations. Players have three minutes to form as many words as possible. In the above image you can see some of the possibilities, like ‘RENT’ and ‘PINE’ and so forth.

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What other word games do you enjoy? And am I being too harsh on mobile games? Do you play any that aren’t constantly throwing ads and popups at you, or trying to get you to spend money on gems or coins? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

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