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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Categori - Ten words. One theme.

Duno what Id call it exactly? A boggle-like smushed together with crossword style riddles and some board re-roll mechanics. Bit of an LLM experiment in spinning off daily, theme-based word games easy enough to bang out over breakfast or a coffee break. Anyway, fire it up in a mobile browser and have a poke at it - appreciate any thoughts as I keep tinkering with it. No account or login required.

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    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 →

  2. 2
    Stop▲63

    Categorical word game

    2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    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 →

  4. 4

    Here’s a free, fun, novel five-letter word game for the web! It’s a game I originally wrote for the iPhone in 2010, but wasn’t able to finish before my first child was born. When I left my senior web developer job in September 2021 I figured I would postpone looking for work and finish the game before another 11 years passed, and expose myself to new skills doing it (in this case, Swift). I released it on the App Store in December, then turned my attention to doing a web version — when suddenly Wordle was in The NY Times, and then everywhere. Perhaps foolishly, I plowed ahead and here we…

    2022 · threemagicwords.app · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    I 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 →

  6. 6

    A cross between Scrabble and Boggle

    2015 · playonwords.tv · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Addictive Word Game

    2017 · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    A fast paced word game that can be deceptively challenging!

    2019 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9NL

    I've been playing Wordle and remembered this puzzle game I used to play with my grandfather. It's inspired by the block puzzles in many newspapers but made to be shorter: just guess the nine letter word. So I made a quick thing to play with my family like we used to. I thought you guys might enjoy it.

    2022 · nineletterwordgame.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10IM
  11. 11

    Scrabble with a gravity twist

    2015 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12
    Letters▲71

    I made a new daily word game for web and iOS which is a funky mix of scrabble and boggle. Each day everyone gets the same randomly generated configuration of bonus tiles and letters on a grid. The app is written completely in SwiftUI and the web port is written in ts/react. Both use the same random seeds each day.

    2015 · thelettersgame.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Find words, steal tiles, color the board!

    2015 · atebits.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A word guessing game

    2022 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    A little game that will grow to BUG you

    2016 · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    If you love word games, you'll love this!

    2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Find words, steal tiles, color the board!

    2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    Bonza▲69

    A new type of crossword!

    2015 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Daily word-grid puzzle

    2023 · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    Az▲70

    Relaxing word puzzle game for iOS

    2021 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    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 →

  22. 22

    A beautiful and addictive word game for iOS

    2015 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23
    Wordzip▲67

    A fast-paced word game

    2016 · warbleandstripe.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    The first fair word game challenge

    2016 · wordcrex.com · 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 →