Before wordle took the world by storm, these online word games defined my highschool years.
Heart pounding and fingers gliding across the screen, I watch as the clock finally comes to a halt. My heart stops and I hold my breath. But, low and behold, I’m greeted by a glowing yellow crown and a heartwarming message.
YOU WON!
Eight ball and cup pong were never my strength. But, with 688 word hunt wins under my belt– I could always count on word hunt for a quick confidence boost. Word hunt is superior in that players can play even when their opponents are unresponsive. It’s revolutionary really. You can continuously send, and play, word hunts and without your (probably annoyed) opponent actually responding to your texts.
By sophomore year, I was still practically undefeatable in word hunt, but soon enough, the NYT Daily Mini replaced that obsession. These small crossword puzzles were perfect for class– unblocked, “academic,”(enough not to get in trouble if caught!) but captivating enough.
Not only do crossword puzzles rely on pure knowledge and intuit
ion, it’s fast paced and can get competitive.
(After all, there’s nothing more satisfactory than finishing a saturday puzzle in less than 30 seconds!)
Lastly, codewords got me and my friends through quarantine. A game typically played in person but turned into an online multiplayer game, it’s an ingenious game of strategy.
The concept makes more sense when you’re actually playing it, but the goal of the game is to take turns guessing (or giving one-word clues) to your teammates. Only the codemasters of the two teams can look at which word cards are red, blue, neutral, or the death card. There are a lot more rules, but the general idea is that the first team to correctly guess all of their cards without guessing the death card wins.
Being the codemaster comes with a lot of pressure, and can get painful watching your teammates deliberate about the clues, but it’s an incredible feeling when they’ve guessed all the words correctly based on a simpl
e clue.
So, before wordle took the world by storm, these online word games defined my high school years.
Honorable mentions to scrabble go and pangrams!
P.S. if you think you can beat me in word hunt, I’m always up for a challenge
Hey Faith, I’ve never played the NYT Daily Mini or codewords, but I have played Word Hunt and the other word game which I’m forgetting the name of right now, but Word Hunt was always one of my best Game Pigeon games. Cup Pong to me was all luck, and I was convinced Game Pigeon was out to get me whenever I played it. Mini Golf was just too much for me. I don’t do angles, I got a C in geometry. 8 Ball was alright, after a while I got really good at positioning the lines to get the ball exactly where it needed to go. But in Word Hunt, I would always win (not always but most of the time). There have been countless times where I play Word Hunt and have gotten double the points as my friend, multiple times in a row too. So I agree with you in that before Wordle, Word Hunt was my main source of brain stimulation to make me think about all the words I knew.
Hey Faith. I am an avid player of Wordle and I love it because I win. I quite literally have never won a game of anagrams or word hunt or whatever other word games game pigeon has to offer. Never. Ever. Won. I straightup believe that this is not my fault even though my vocabulary is quite limited in an academic environment. It is completely the games fault that I lose, not mine. Now if we talk about 8 ball and cup pong, best believe I’m about to hand you an L you will not forget till you are in your grave. With my 110 wins in 8ball (I recently got an iPhone ok), three of which were wins from the break, I can simply conclude that my eyes have built a built-in protractor. Cup pong is a bit more luck, but I’m confident enough to say I’m good at it.