I Heckin Love Daily Games

My morning routine now pretty much consists of going through multiple daily minigames so here's a somewhat curated list of what I enjoy playing, whether it be alone or together with friends.

1. NYT Games, for the crosswords.

https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords

I’d like to thank my sister for originally introducing me to crosswords about three years ago — I’ve been solving them daily ever since. The regular-sized crossword increases in difficulty as the week goes on, from Monday (easiest) to Saturday (hardest), with Sunday being more of a Wednesday/Thursday level. I can usually finish Monday through Wednesday without hints, but anything later in the week is still a bit out of reach. There’s also the Midi and the Mini, which as their name suggests, are smaller in size and great if you want something quick and easy.

The yearly subscription is optional given the variety of free alternatives out there (The Atlantic, Washington Post) but I’ve gotten accustomed to playing the NYT crosswords, not to mention being able to play other games like Spelling Bee to its full extent.

2. LinkedIn Games, for the variety.

https://www.linkedin.com/games

I’ll admit it never crossed my mind that LinkedIn would have good daily games, but they’re all surprisingly unique and satisfying. I find them helpful in the morning as a quick warm-up to wake my brain up and get focused for the day. There’s also an opt-in leaderboard with your connections that I look forward to checking every day to see how my times compare, and it usually gets pretty competitive especially with my girlfriend.

My favourite two are Tango and Queens, which are both grid games where you have to place things down, and a lot of it just comes down to pattern recognition. Highly recommend giving those two a try.

3. Timeguessr, for a twist on history and geography.

https://timeguessr.com/

This is a pretty neat game where you’re given five pictures and have to guess the year and location each one was taken. I really enjoy the deductive process of this game because it requires you to piece together contextual clues, such as what people are wearing, what language appears on signs and what it says, and whether the picture relates to a well-known historical event.

A couple things I’ve learned: black-and-white photos can often be a red herring, and the types of cars are often very helpful for narrowing a year guess down to a period of one to two decades.

4. Catfishing, for the general knowledge.

https://catfishing.net/

Likely the hardest game on this list, Catfishing gives you ten questions where for each one, you have to guess a Wikipedia article from its categories. It’s pretty much the ultimate general knowledge test, since each answer often simply comes down to whether you know it or not.

When I play, it’s almost always in a call with a group of friends so we have more input to work with. It also helps that one of my friends is absolutely cracked at history, making a lot of the historical figure questions a breeze.

5. Maptap, for geography.

https://maptap.gg/

This is a simple and straightforward game where you’re given five cities in increasing order of difficulty and have to locate each one by tapping on a rotatable globe. Points are based on how far your guess is from the actual city, and more difficult cities are worth more. I enjoy this game partly because it’s quick to play through and tests your knowledge of individual cities in addition to the countries.

Honourable Mentions