Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to A to Z – A word game I built from a childhood road trip memory
Long time lurker here. My family had a pen-and-paper game we'd play on long drives to visit my great-grandmother. After she passed, I spent the holidays recreating it: https://a26z.fun How it works: Find 15 words from a category (like "Stone Fruits," "US States," or "Dog Breeds") as fast as you can. Once you meet the 15 word minimum, you can play for as long as you want. Each letter shows how many target words start with it (A¹ = one word starts with A, N² = two words start with N) That small ² in the bottom-right? Multi-word answers allowed. For "US States" with N², both "NEW…
A to Z is a word-guessing game where players find at least 15 words within a given category as quickly as possible. Each letter displays how many target words begin with it, providing clues to aid deduction. Players… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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This is a game I wrote over the last month and a bit. The effort allocation was pretty different from what I've done in the past. The game design snapped together very quickly: I had the initial idea, played a couple of games on a spreadsheet to get a feel for the idea, and made one change based on those plays. After that everything felt just right through multiple rounds of playtesting. Likewise the puzzle generation is nowhere near as elaborate as in my previous game, fairly simple methods worked well and provided good variety. Instead I ended up spending silly amounts of time on curating…
2024 · huewords.snellman.net · its alternatives →
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Hi everybody. I occasionally make little browser-based games, and this is my latest attempt. It's not quite done, but it's quite playable (note: it does include audio): https://www.omiword.com/ This has been my occasional tinker target for ~5 years now, starting in the early days of Covid. The objective is to drag letter tiles within certain boundaries to spell four common American-English words. It hasn't got ads or anything, it's just supposed to be fun for its own sake. If people happen to like it, I might add an option for folks to make a small, one-time payment to unlock…
2025 · omiword.com · its alternatives →
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Word Slicer▲85I shared Word Slicer here a while back — it’s a free, ad-free, browser-based word game where you try to find 5 words in 5 minutes. Since then I’ve been improving it (daily challenge archive, cleaner UI, better stats), and I’d love more feedback from the HN crowd. In particular, I’m interested in thoughts on the gameplay flow, design/UX, and what would make it more engaging.
2024 · wordslicer.com · its alternatives →
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Stepdle▲74Word game where you guess a 4,5,6 and a 7 letter word
2022 · stepdle.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, My friend and I just launched a vocabulary quiz game. It's a two Player Game where you challenge your opponent with a word and answer their challenge question. Whoever gets the highest score in a round of 5, wins. Currently, words are from Barron's 333 most essential GRE wordlist to help students preparing for the standardized test. You can check out the game at: [Play Store] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buildmyvoc... or [Hybrid web app in Ionic - Please allow some time to load] https://buildmyvocab.in/wordsgame We would…
2017 · its alternatives →
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RobinWords▲63Fun daily word game where you make sequences of words.
2022 · robinwords.com · its alternatives →
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Wordrow▲65A fun fast word game based on a mix of Wordle and Tetris
2023 · wordrow.fun · its alternatives →
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I've been working on a simple multiplayer word game called Alphabet Soup. It's a bit like NYT Spelling Bee, except it's multiplayer and only your best (longest) word counts toward your score. So, instead of trying to find as many words as possible, the game is more about finding one unusually good word. You can play with friends in a private match, or, you can join a public Arena match to play against other players who are online. If no one else is around, you'll be matched with a bot. The game works well with just 2 players, but, also works with bigger groups since the game isn't…
Aug 2026 · alphabetsoup.club · its alternatives →
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I built a procedurally generated word-search game where the puzzle never ends - as you scroll, the grid expands infinitely and new words appear. It’s designed to be quick to pick up, satisfying to play, and a little addictive. The core game works without an account using the pre-defined games, but signing up allows you to generate games using any topic you can think of. I’d love feedback on gameplay, performance, and whether the endless format feels engaging over time. If you try it, I’d really appreciate any bug reports or suggestions. Thanks in advance!
Dec 2025 · endless-wordsearch.com · its alternatives →
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The idea is to get from a starting word to a target word by creating a list of words to go in the middle. You can only change one letter at a time. Yesterday's words: https://twitter.com/ChangelistGame/status/1518695582151237632 Today's game: https://changelist.rocks/
2022 · its alternatives →
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My friends and I love playing description games, but got tired of the same old cards - so I made a simple web app with a fresh set of prompts, and a different timer mechanic: Rather than teams taking turns, everyone sits together, and you describe only one prompt at a time. As soon as you're done you pass the phone to the player on your left, who gets a new set of prompts to choose from, and so on. After an exponential (memoryless) random amount of time, the round ends (loudly!), and whoever was holding the phone at the time loses a life for their team. It's like Hot Potato. The prompts are…
2025 · wilf.live · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! This is a word search game I launched in the beginning of this year - didn't get much traction then, but it's been posted around a bit (right now getting some traffic from kottke.org) and now has over 12,000 words found! Now that it's a little more filled out I figured I'd share it again. Really enjoying seeing what everyone is making on it - it appears most people start by just adding a few words to the big clump in the middle, then adding to other people's projects (or ruining them) and finally working on their own little concepts. My favorite is the kitty to the north. Hope you…
Jan 2026 · words.zip · its alternatives →
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Hi everyone, Wanted to share a game I built. It's called Unscramble! and I believe it's the simplest word building game. Rules: You get a few letters on screen. You need to make one word with all the letters. Tap a letter to select. Tap again to deselect. Faster you go, better you score. If you enter anagrams of the word it's looking for, it gives you extra points. If you are stuck, you can either "Ask Friend" or get Hint. You get extra points for getting the word fast but you don't get penalized for taking too long. I believe the simplicity of the game along with big touch buttons makes it…
Sep 2026 · its alternatives →
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Wordsgame▲13A simple slack game to test your word formation skills
2020 · slackwords.com · its alternatives →
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A few months ago I shared 18 Words, Zanagrams and Sunflowers here, which loads of you ended up playing and sending really useful feedback. I’ve now brought all three together into PZL games along with three new daily games. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone here who played, commented and helped improve them. HN has been a big part of getting these games off the ground. I'v now had over 1 million players across them. Would love to hear what you think of the new site, and any feedback is very welcome.
Aug 2026 · its alternatives →
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I just finished my first iOS game, Snack Words, which is a real-time, multi-player word finding game. iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snack-words/id425786167?mt=8&ls=1 YouTube video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zPQuqoUHqU I wanted to build something very simple and minimal. There's no figuring out who to play, and each game is only 90 seconds long. The backend is 2,400 lines (so short!) of Erlang which speaks a custom protocol (length tagged JSON packets) to the client. The Objective-C side protocol implementation makes heavy use of blocks and works a lot like my…
2011 · itunes.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, I love building small games (as Pong, Wordle, Tetris, etc.), but they're never quite unique enough to justify their own site. So I built boring.game - a daily "boring" game where the social mechanics (predicting your score, challenging other users) is more interesting than the game itself. I started a HN team if you want to compare your results: https://boring.game/invite/SRhyUStjin You can also play all daily games without signing up, if that is what you prefer. Built with SvelteKit (first time using Svelte - loved it!). Would love feedback on both the concept and…
2025 · boring.game · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →