Wordle Is Too Easy, but Now I’m Obsessed With These Daily Puzzles.

I enjoy solving one or three word puzzles every day. Wordle is a great game, but it’s not as engaging anymore. Crosswords are fun when I have time (I love the NYT crossword on Thursdays), but I don’t always do them. Lately, my favorite games are Minute Cryptic and Parseword —they’re a great introduction to the incredibly weird world of British “cryptographic” crosswords.

What is a cryptographic puzzle?

Cryptograms are a special kind of word puzzle, unlike anything else. There are entire crossword puzzles full of cryptograms, but the daily puzzles I write about each have only one clue, so you can focus on what’s going on in that single clue.

Cryptograms look like typical crossword clues—a short text with a single word or phrase as the answer—but they can be solved by rethinking the clue as instructions for a wordplay. You might realize you’re being asked to create an anagram of the word, insert another word into it, reverse the word, or perform a variety of other clever tricks.

For example, one recent clue on Minute Cryptic was, “Learn to dance to 1970s music! Get $5 off for beginners!” To solve it (which required several clues), I had to do the following:

• For now, ignore the word “learn,” as it turns out that it is the definition of the word I’m trying to find.

• Translate “1970s dance music” into disco format.

• Translate “$5” into another representation of the number five, the Roman numeral V.

• Remove the beginning of the word “per” and you are left with ER.

• Combine these elements to form the word DISCOVER, a synonym for learn.

If, after solving the puzzle, you scream into your phone, “Are you kidding me?” then you’ve done it right. Another favorite of mine is “Schrödinger’s Dead Pet Box Contains Almost Half a Skeleton.” To build the “Dead Pet Box,” you need to place the letters SKE (almost half of the word “skeleton”) inside CAT. It spells CASKET. Get it?

I’ve always loved simple American crosswords—where the clue is a definition and that’s it—and found solving cryptographic crosswords nearly impossible. But friendly puzzles like Minute Cryptic and Parsewords help you learn the tricks, and after playing them daily for a while, I can often solve cryptographic clues without any prompting.

How to learn to solve daily cryptography puzzles

Although my favorite course is Minute Cryptic, I’ll show you Parseword first, as it more clearly teaches the manipulations you might encounter in cryptographic hints. When you first visit parseword.com, you’ll find a fairly detailed guide.

Instead of simply presenting you with answer fields, Parseword lets you click on each word in the prompt. When you click, you’ll get the option to replace that word with another. If you click on two words, you’ll get suggestions for different ways to combine them. The interface lets you click through different options to explore all the possibilities, which can be a great way to get out of a jam when you’d otherwise just be staring at the screen, wondering what to do.

Minute Cryptic uses a different approach, relying on clues. You can decide whether you want the game to show indicators (words that indicate required actions, like “off” and “beginner” in my DISCOVER example), ” hints” (words used to identify parts), or even indicate which word is the definition. If you still can’t solve the riddle, you can ask the game to reveal one letter at a time until you finally find the right one. In Minute Cryptic, it’s impossible to fail the game—you’ll simply be told whether you used more or fewer clues than the average player.

Both games are beginner-friendly—no one will judge you if you need hints, but they also won’t judge you if you choose not to. Parseword may be more structured, with its “training mode” and automatic hints. I prefer the hints in Minute Cryptic, and I really like that they recently added a “notepad” where you can select and rearrange letters—perfect if you know you need to create an anagram. (Before this feature, I used scranagram as a cheat-free anagram tool. You type in letters and hit “shuffle” until inspiration strikes.)

After a few days of playing Minute Cryptic, I began to understand how the clues were constructed. After a few weeks, I was usually solving them at a “below average” level. A few months later, I signed up for a subscription that provides unlimited mini crosswords, each with its own clue.

Another step toward learning, if you’re feeling confident, is to try the Guardian’s “Quick Crypto Crossword.” Not only is it shorter than a typical crypto crossword, but it also includes explanations of the clue types used in today’s crossword. For example, crossword #103 includes anagrams, hidden words, similar-sounding words, and acrostics, but no other clue types. You’ll practice spotting and solving these four types, but you’ll have to find the solutions yourself.

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