Forget Elden Ring or Lego Star Wars, word games are what all the cool kids are playing these days. With countless puzzlers still seeking out today's Wordle, goofing around with the alphabet is the most popular it's been since primary school, as demonstrated by the legion of games like Wordle that have appeared across the Internet like daffodils in spring.
To celebrate the second coming of the dictionary, I've put together a list of the best free word games you can play right now. You'll find variants on Wordle, twists on Scrabble, Tetris with letters, and even a physics-based wordsearch. None of them will cost you a penny to play, and most can be played directly in your browser. So stop reading that book like a darned caveman—come see what words are really for.
Wordle
Release date: 2021| Developer: Josh Wardle | Official Site
Let's do the obvious one first. Wordle is the online phenomenon where you get six attempts to guess a five-letter word. Each guess colours the suggested word's letters based on how accurate they are. Green for correct, yellow for correct but misplaced, and grey for wrong. It's smart, elegant, tremendously popular, and has made Twitter even more insufferable.
Quordle
Release date: 2022| Developer: Freddie Meyer| Official Site
A supercharged version of Wordle, Quordle challenges players with determining four separate words within nine guesses. Each guess will appear in all four boxes, which means you must be careful and efficient with proposed solutions. Ideal for Wordle fans looking for an additional challenge.
Word Whip
Release date: 2021| Developer: KRGameDev| Official Site
Word Whip is a quickfire test of your vocabulary. Each puzzle gives you a line of tiles partially filled with letters, and you must think of as many words as you can that use those letters in those positions. For example, you might be challenged with finding five letter words that begin with 'RO', or six letter words that start and end in 'S'. As with Scrabble, rare letters like X are worth more than common letters such as E, so you can earn a higher score by inputting more obscure words. It's one of the more original word games on this list, and executes its premise well.
Word Valley
Release date: 2017| Developer: HyperHippo| Official Site
If you've ever thought to yourself "What if you added physics to a wordsearch?" then either you're the creator of Word Valley, or you think about some weird things. This game challenges players with identifying words in a bouncy jumble of letters. When you put together a word, it disappears like a line in Tetris, with other letters falling into the vacated spaces. The goal of each level is to guide a key down to the bottom of the pile, which will unlock a barrier to the next challenge. It's a laid-back timewaster with a fun gimmick and a lightweight fantasy theme.
Lettris
Release date: 2018 | Developer: Sam Barker| Official Site
What do you get if you cross letters with Tetris? That's right, a headache! Lettris adopts the broad framework of the iconic shape-matching puzzler, but each square of those falling tetrominos also has a letter on it. You need to spin the shapes around to fit with other tetrominos in a way that forms words. It's an entertaining hybrid, but fair warning, it is very hard, and may turn you cross-eyed.
Elimination
Release date: 2019 | Developer: Ahmed Khalifa| Official Site
Elimination is a fast-paced word game that presents you with a line of jumbled letters, then tasks you to form words by deleting letters from the line. It may sound simple, but the challenge comes from finding the highest-scoring word from several possibilities. Longer words generally score more points, but some letters have multipliers attached to them. You only have around ten seconds to solve each puzzle, so you must quickly identify the available words, and decide which one is more valuable.
Phonetic
Release date: 2022 | Developer: Cameron Wang| Official Site
Free to download on Steam, Phonetic is an unusual word game challenging players with identifying words based on their phonetic spelling. If that sounds easy, trust me, it isn't. The phonetic symbology can be difficult to decipher, and you only have a limited time to figure out the correct word. Get three guesses wrong, and it's game over.
Wordmeister
Release date: 2020 | Developer: MarketJS| Official Site
Wordmeister is basically digital Scrabble, but it differentiates itself from other digested versions of Scrabble by being singleplayer. It follows all the rules of the classic word game, but pits you against a capable AI opponent instead of other human players. Handy if you don't want to deal with Internet randoms.
Babble Royale
Release date: 2021 | Developer: Everybody House Games| Official Site
If, on the other hand, you prefer to deal with your Scrabble rivals by murdering them, Babble Royale is the game for you. This bizarre word 'em up sees sixteen players frantically trying to think up words on a giant scrabble board, which is slowly being eroded from the edges by an encroaching 'hot zone'. If you form a word that connects to another player, that player dies. Snake your way to the centre of the board, and you can claim the title of the deadliest wordslinger in town.
Wander Words
Release date: 2021 | Developer: MSN Games| Official Site
Wander Words is similar to a wordsearch, only every letter in the box forms part of the word or phrase you're looking for. But the phrase is all twisted up like a snake in a shoebox, so you need to figure out where the words start and end, the drag the mouse through each letter in the correct sequence. Some of the phrases can be quite long, including things like famous quotes or song lyrics. Each game gives you five minutes to solve as many Wander Words as you can, and you may be surprised by how challenging that is.
Crocword
Release date: 2017 | Developer: Clever Apps| Official Site
Crocword is all about getting the most out of a few letters. Each challenge presents you with a simple crossword and a pool of letters at the bottom of the screen. Using the mouse, you need to join up the letters in different combinations to fill the crossword. Initially straightforward, Crocword becomes increasingly complex, challenging you to find longer words in larger combinations. Most levels also have hidden words to find, which is a pleasing touch.
Google Feud
Release date: 2013 | Developer: Justin Hook| Official Site
Google Feud borrows the structure of daytime TV classic Family Feud (Family Fortunes if you're from the UK) and combines it with the weird and wonderful world of Google Autocomplete. You choose from a range of categories such as People, Culture, Names etc, and are given a prompt like "How do I get rid of-" or "My cat likes to eat-". You must then guess the ten most popular Google searches based upon that prompt. The results are frequently hilarious, often baffling, and will occasionally make you want to rinse your eyes with bleach.
