The best daily puzzle games for iPhone.

What makes a good daily puzzle

• Everybody gets the same one, so comparing results is worthwhile.
• It fits in a coffee break, and the share does not spoil it.
• It tests something your other dailies do not. Three word games in a row is one habit, not three.

The list is grouped rather than ranked, because “best” depends on what you enjoy.

Word puzzles

Wordle and Connections

Both from The New York Times, in the NYT Games app. Wordle gives you six tries at a five-letter word, colouring each guess’s letters. Connections gives you sixteen words to sort into four groups of four, with four mistakes allowed; see games like Connections.

Strands, Spelling Bee and the Mini

Also in NYT Games: a themed word search, a make-words-from-seven-letters puzzle, and a crossword that takes a minute or two.

Quartiles

Apple’s daily word puzzle in Apple News+. You build words from tiles of letter groups, and the best finds use four tiles.

Logic puzzles

LinkedIn publishes short daily logic puzzles in its app. Queens places one crown in every row, column and coloured region with none touching; Tango fills a grid with two symbols under a few rules; Zip draws one path through a numbered grid. Deduction rather than vocabulary makes them a good pairing with the word games.

Knowledge puzzles in Safari

Some popular dailies are websites that play well in Safari: Worldle (a country from its outline), Framed (a film from its stills) and Immaculate Grid (players who fit two clues). See games like Worldle, games like Framed and games like Immaculate Grid.

A data puzzle: Huezle

Huezle is neither words nor logic nor straight trivia. Each day there is one strip of coloured bands drawn from real data, such as a TV season, a basketball game or a baby name, and you choose which of four answers made it. You read the shape rather than recall the fact. It is an iPhone app, it works offline, and the daily puzzle is free. Four strips, from four categories:

JanuaryDecember

• Negative YTD Returns
• Flat for the year
• Positive YTD Returns

A strip that turns deep green early and stays there is a company the year was kind to. Zoom ended 2020 up 401%.

18802024

• Rare
• Common
• Everywhere

Linda goes from 0.4% of US girls in the 1937 band to 5.3% in the 1949 band. A name that bright for that short a time belongs to one generation.

Left edge of the coverRight edge of the cover

• Left side of the cover
• Middle of the cover
• Right side of the cover

An album strip is the cover itself, sliced into twelve and read left to right. Pale stone almost all the way across, with a short run of sky blue.

First moveLast move

• Black ahead
• Level
• White ahead

A World Championship game, evaluated move by move by a chess engine. Close to level for a long while, then a slow, steady turn to gold: the shape of a positional win.

A balanced set

Pick one from each row and no two puzzles ask the same thing. Games like Wordle goes deeper on word games, and the Huezle daily explains its one-a-day puzzle.

Questions