Traditional pen-and-paper puzzle games like word searches and sudokus are a great way to exercise the brain and destress. Nowadays, you don’t have to buy magazines or newspapers or puzzle booklets to solve these puzzles. Instead, you can access them for free online. You’ll find a huge range of sites and apps with fun features like timers and scoreboards to make solving these puzzles more thrilling. Below are just some of the puzzles worth playing in your free time.
Word searches
A word search is one of the most basic word puzzles. Hidden in a grid of letters you must find certain words (these may or may not be provided to you). The easiest word search puzzles only display words vertically or horizontally, however harder word searches may display words diagonally and in some cases backwards. Word searches are great puzzles for improving spelling, concentration and pattern recognition. You can find these puzzles in various difficulty levels online.
Crosswords
Crosswords are puzzles consisting of a grid of squares with blank spaces that you must fill in with words using clues with corresponding numbers. They can be a great way to test one’s vocabulary and general knowledge, while also testing spelling and deduction skills. You can find plenty of crosswords available in different difficulties online, as well as crosswords based around niche themes. It’s worth noting that many other word puzzles are partly inspired by crosswords such as Scrabble (which you can also play online) and various anagram apps like Wordscapes.
Cryptograms
Cryptograms are encrypted messages that you have to decode. Each letter in the original text is replaced by another character, and you must work out what letter each character stands for. The message could be a word, a sentence or even multiple sentences. Solving cryptogram puzzles is a great way to boost memory skills and deductive reasoning skills. These puzzles are available online in a variety of difficulty levels either in the form of websites or apps.
Sudokus
Sudoku puzzles consist of a 9 x 9 grid that you must fill in with numbers. Every row, column and subgrid must contain the numbers 1 to 9. By working out which numbers are missing from each row, column and subgrid, you can determine where to place each number. Sudokus are great for improving deductive reasoning skills and general cognitive skills like memory. Online sudokus come in a range of different difficulty levels, including some puzzles that venture beyond the 9 x 9 grid format and incorporate letters.
Spot the Difference
Spot the Difference is a popular kids’ pen-and-paper puzzle that requires you to find the difference between two or more images. There could be multiple differences to find – and these could be obvious or very subtle depending on the difficulty level. These puzzles use visual discrimination skills to solve. You can find many sites and apps dedicated to these puzzles. This includes more tricky video versions of these puzzles that require you to spot the difference between two animated sequences.