Today's puzzles
Three puzzles, published fresh every day and identical for everyone playing them. Finish one, keep the streak, come back tomorrow.
How the daily puzzles work
Each of the three daily puzzles is generated from the date, which means everyone gets exactly the same board on the same day. There is no leaderboard to climb and no account to create - the only thing you are really playing against is yourself, and the only thing that is tracked is a streak counter kept in your own browser.
The puzzles rotate through the year rather than repeating a fixed set, so there is always something you have not seen. A Sudoku from a Tuesday in March is a different puzzle from the one you solved last Tuesday, and the difficulty still depends only on the day you happen to open it.
Today's three
- Sudoku is one 9 by 9 grid with three difficulty levels and a hint button that fills in one cell when you are stuck. Most people finish the daily in about six minutes; the hard setting takes considerably longer, because the daily grid is not built to be quick.
- Word Search hides eight words in a 12 by 12 grid, running forwards, backwards, up, down and diagonally. The words change daily and the grid is generated from the same list as the printable sheets, so you can work on paper and then finish on screen.
- Nonogram gives you row and column counts and a hidden picture. It is the slowest of the three and the one people keep coming back to, because the moment the picture resolves is genuinely satisfying.
Keeping a streak
- A streak is counted for each puzzle separately, so you can keep one going on Sudoku and another on Word Search.
- The counter advances when you finish a daily puzzle, not when you open it. A half-finished grid does not count.
- Miss a day and that puzzle's streak resets to one. The other two are unaffected.
- Everything is stored in your browser, so there is nothing to sign in to and nothing to lose if you clear your browsing data - except the streak itself.
If you miss a day
Nothing is lost except the streak. Every one of these games has a free-play mode that generates a new board whenever you press the button, so a missed day costs you a day of the counter and nothing else. The daily puzzles are the habit, not the only way to play.
Which one to start with
Start with Word Search if you want a puzzle you can finish in a coffee break, with Sudoku if you want the one that most reliably turns into a daily habit. Nonogram is the one to leave until you have a spare ten minutes and a pencil.
Beyond the daily
The rest of the arcade runs from reflex games to board games against the computer. The full catalogue lists everything, the printables are paper versions you can take away, and the updates page records what has changed and when.