If you read online newspapers, you may have seen links to Puzzles. Last December Hearst Newspapers purchased a new start-up, Puzzmo, and linked it to the daily Puzzle section of their newspapers.
The new site publishes eight fresh games every day, five of which are free to play.
Solving puzzles is one of the few sedentary activities in life that has been scientifically proven to make you happier and healthier. From helping to keep your memory sharp to the natural thrill of a dopamine hit that comes with cracking one, puzzling just feels good.
Paperback puzzle books are great, but being able to play them on your phone makes puzzles even more accessible.
Simply creating a free account will give you access to 5 games that refresh on a daily basis. Here is a quick look at the 5 free games.
Let The Fun Begin
SpellTower
SpellTower takes the classic word search and turns it into a shifty beast that’s both more creatively satisfying and more challenging to complete.
You are given a grid of letters and tasked with roping together as many words as you can—but the trick is that the letters disappear as you use them, forcing you to plan your moves ahead if you want to clear the entire board.
Flipart
Puzzmo describes Flipart as a digital jigsaw puzzle “inspired by organizing a sock drawer.” The board is packed with colorful pieces reminiscent of Tetris blocks that need to be rotated in order for them all to fit with no overlaps. Of all the site’s games, Gage says this is the ideal gateway for a puzzling novice. “It’s a visual puzzle and you can get the hang of it just by clicking around,” he says. “Many people don’t even need to read the instructions!”
Really Bad Chess
Picture chess, but played with totally random pieces. Every day the board is set with a new selection. Knowing some chess strategy will help you crack the competitive daily leaderboard on Really Bad Chess, but you can jump right in and play even if you don’t know the difference between a rook and a knight. “We show you how all of the pieces move,” Gage says. “I’d never played a game of chess to completion until I built and tried Really Bad Chess for the first time.”
The game’s attractive, minimal interface shows the potential moves of each piece when you touch them, including those of your AI opponent, and by limiting your eligible moves to ones that will keep you alive whenever your king is in trouble. Plan to make use of the “undo” button. A lot.
Typeshift
Typeshift puzzles show you several columns of letters and tasks you with spelling words across a row until you’ve used every letter at least once. Unlike in SpellTower, you’re able to reuse letters here, making it a bit faster paced and more forgiving.
Cross|Word
This one might look familiar. In Cross|word, players are handed a new midi-sized grid each day. The voices of the Puzzmo game editors really shine through. The Feb. 8 puzzle, for example, included pop culture clues about La Toya Jackson, Talking Heads and clever references to “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” and cassingles (“Holders of some ’80s bangers”).
