My Daily Puzzle Rotation

I love puzzles. I was lucky enough to coauthor a puzzle book at my job, and I’ve been fascinated by any logical, engaging game I can find. I’m no expert, but I am an enthusiast. Over the last several months, I’ve nailed down a set of puzzles that bookend each day, getting my mind working in the morning and letting me wind down in the evening.

Flow

I’ve played Flow for years. There is a daily puzzle set, and a couple of years ago, they added a weekly set released each Monday. I do both and have a daily streak of hundreds of days. It’s short and simple and is the first thing I do on my phone every morning.

NYT Games

I became a convert to the NYT Games lifestyle last year. I started with Wordle, added Connections shortly thereafter, and more recently began playing Spelling Bee. I don’t currently play the other mini-games available in the app—I only have so much time for puzzles in the morning—but I enjoy these language games as a primer for the next step in my puzzle process.

Apple News Crosswords and Quartiles

Erin and I share a family subscription to all the Apple services, which includes Apple News. I don’t care for it as a news source, but their crosswords are approachable. Their mini is exactly what you would expect, taking about thirty seconds to complete; their main crossword is always the same size and takes five to ten minutes. Because I do these immediately in the morning, I typically use autocorrect for the larger crossword. I focus on enjoying these puzzles rather than trying to impress myself with my cleverness. Since these crosswords don’t have themes I’m losing little by correcting my errors in the moment.

Quartiles was introduced two weeks ago and is a take on Spelling Bee using parts of words. There are twenty tiles, each containing two to four letters. The ultimate goal is to find five words made of four tiles each, but you can find smaller words to boost your overall score. It’s a trickier game that I don’t always finish before I begin work: it involves a lot of staring and trying combinations, so I’ve had the most success playing for ten minutes at a time and coming back to it with fresh eyes later in the day.

Stitch Daily Shikaku

I discovered stitch. through Apple Arcade. It’s a simple Shikaku-style puzzle game themed around cross-stitching, mixing puzzle and color-by-number. The main puzzles are straightforward and I play them to kill time. Meanwhile, the daily puzzle is a proper Shikaku setup with no artistic theming.

Trivial Pursuit Daily Challenge

I have no memory of how I came across it, but the Trivial Pursuit website has a handful of activities, including a Daily Challenge where you get six questions, one from each of the classic Trivial Pursuit categories. The questions often share an implicit theme—maybe they’re all related to bears—and if you play it on the same device each day, it’ll track your lifetime stats. I’ve sat around 67% accuracy for a while, which I’m pleased with.

NYT Daily Crosswords

I typically do all of the above before I get out of bed or at least before I start work. However, I work on the NYT Crosswords in the evening when they release the puzzles for the following day; for example, I work on the Tuesday puzzles on Monday evening. With this routine, I can always bleed into the next day if a weekend puzzle is too challenging to finish in the time I’ve given myself.

I start with the Mini and then do the Daily, each without autocorrection or hints. If I get stuck on the Daily—I go through all the clues, across and down, without making any progress—I will go to the internet for hints. I prefer to look up factual information—often musical artists or actors—rather than wordplay or themed clues.

I have a streak on these crosswords beginning in November 2023, and it is a minor point of pride that I regularly make time to work on these puzzles. If I’m going to play games on my phone, they may as well be vaguely beneficial to my brain.