Daily Brain Games

All the games here reset daily. One puzzle a day, the same puzzle for everyone, and when you're done you're done, that's the whole appeal, and it's the only rule I applied. Games you can grind for hours didn't make it, however good they are.

They're grouped loosely by what they ask of you. Some are word games: crosswords rebuilt from tiles, cryptic clues cut down to one a day, categories you have to spot before you can sort them. Others are logic and spatial: place walls, place queens, work out the shape of the answer. A couple are general knowledge, tested against places or the week's news rather than trivia for its own sake.

The full set takes about twenty minutes if you play all of them, which is roughly a coffee. Most people pick three or four and let the rest go. I check these every couple of months and drop anything that goes paywalled, adds a mandatory account, or quietly stops posting a new puzzle each day.

If you already love one of the major puzzle games like Wordle and want to widen your list, or you're looking for something to do in the four minutes before a meeting starts, this is the list.