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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Tidy Baby is a SET game but with words

Hi HN — Tidy Baby is a new game made by me and Wyna Liu (of NYT Connections!) that is inspired by the legendary card-based game SET that we assume many of you love (we too love SET). In SET, you’ve got four dimensions: shape, number, color, and shading, each with three variants. In Tidy Baby you only have to deal with three dimensions: - word length (3, 4, or 5 letters) - part of speech (noun, verb, or adjective) - style (bold, underline, or italic) Like in SET, you are trying to form sets of three cards where, along each dimension, the set is either all the same or all different. If you’ve…

Tidy Baby is a word-based puzzle game inspired by the card game SET. Players form sets of three words by matching or varying three dimensions: word length (3, 4, or 5 letters), part of speech (noun, verb, adjective)… 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

    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 →

  2. 2

    Whittle is a small word game I've been working on. Each phrase must be whittled down by one letter (or space) each turn. The remaining phrase must still consist of valid words. That's it! There's a daily puzzle, as well as an archive of old puzzles. The idea for the game came to me in a dream (really) and I built the puzzle generator with my partner, who's also a software engineer. It's a labor of love! Any feedback or suggestions are welcome. Thanks for playing!

    2025 · playwhittle.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    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 →

  4. 4

    Fun daily word game where you make sequences of words.

    2022 · robinwords.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Shape▲81

    A letter shaping game

    2015 · shape.method.ac · its alternatives →

  6. 6IM

    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 →

  7. 7

    A simple slack game to test your word formation skills

    2020 · slackwords.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    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 →

  9. 9

    A word guessing game

    2022 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    I'm in the process of learning German and wanted to play a German version of the NYT’s Spelling Bee. It was awful, I was very bad at it, it was not fun. So I built my own version of Spelling Bee meant for people like me. Three Emojis is a daily word game designed for language learners. You get seven letters and a list of blanked-out words to find. When you discover shorter words, they automatically fill into longer ones—like a crossword—which turns out to be really useful for languages like German. Each word also gets three emojis assigned to it as a clue, created by GPT-5 to try and capture…

    Nov 2025 · threeemojis.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    Stepdle▲74

    Word game where you guess a 4,5,6 and a 7 letter word

    2022 · stepdle.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hi everyone, I got this idea for a game where, starting from a four letter word you need to go as deep as you can in your vocabulary, changing only one letter per word. bear -> beer -> peer... Each correct word gives you 1 point Each incorrect word takes one life away from you, you start with 3

    Jun 2026 · victorribeiro.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Dead simple games made with word vectors. . Contribute to Hellisotherpeople/Language-games development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Easy to learn but hard to master word game

    2020 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    web based word game combining anagrams and word ladders

    2023 · anagramish.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    A fast paced word game that can be deceptively challenging!

    2019 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    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 →

  18. 18

    Easy baby play ideas

    2019 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19SA

    Hi HN, I was late to wordle, so I am also late to making my own version. In Spindle, you rotate words on a grid with the aim of assembling the day’s target word. I enjoy it, so I thought some of you might enjoy it too. From a tech perspective, it’s a very simple Laravel / Livewire app. My happy place in recent years has been Typescript and SvelteKit, so this was a bit of an adjustment, but it allowed me to take advantage of an existing shared hosting server meaning no additional financial outlay. Happy to report a positive experience with PHP and this framework, although I do miss…

    2023 · playspindle.com · its alternatives →

  20. 202W

    2024 · 23words.xyz · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    My friend and I have been working on this word game as a side project for about six months, and we’re excited to finally share it beyond our family and friends! The idea came from a simple game my friend used to play with his kids during long car rides — just using their heads and maybe a pencil and paper. He had such fond memories of it that we decided to bring it to life as a proper game. We’d love for you to try it out and let us know what you think! PS This is my first real frontend-heavy project, and clean code was not my priority, so I'm sure there is considerable room for improvement…

    Feb 2026 · subletters.fun · its alternatives →

  22. 22TW
  23. 23

    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 →

  24. 24

    Your new favorite word game: a new Daily and Mini every day. Drag lettered pieces into a frame and turn them until every row and column spells a word.

    16d ago · wordminos.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 →