Second edition: 17 games up, 7 games up and a fresh coat of paint

Hey there,

Peter from DLES.gg here, with the second issue of my little newsletter. Things are a bit crazy on my end recently, work is super busy, we're getting ready for summer holiday, I've shipped a bunch of improvements to the site, I'm prototyping a new DLE game and the game submissions are going through the roof. At the time of writing this, I have 113 submitted games in the backlog, I'm trying to go through them as fast as possible, but it takes time. So if your game is one of them, please bear with me, I'll get there one day!

But, enough of complaining, let's have a look what happened last week. I processed a pretty big batch this time. 17 new games have landed since the last issue, and I cleared out a chunk of dead games into the graveyard. Grab a coffee, there's a lot to click through.

Recently added games

• Coastle — Guess the mystery roller coaster in 6 tries. Each guess compares country, manufacturer, seating type, inversions, height, length, and speed, with higher/lower arrows on the numeric stats to steer you toward the answer. Hints unlock after guesses 3 and 5.

• Flags Game — You're shown only the percentage breakdown of the colours in a mystery country's flag. Type country guesses, and each wrong guess reveals part of the flag to narrow it down.

• Google Feud — Hit Question of the Day, then guess how Google autocompletes the given search phrase. You're filling in the top 10 real autocomplete results, scored higher for the more popular ones, with 4 wrong guesses allowed before the round ends.

• Griddable — Fill a 4x4 grid one letter at a time over 16 rounds. On odd rounds everyone is dealt the same "blind" letter; on even rounds you choose your own. Place each letter to build valid words across rows and columns, scoring 1 point per letter in the best word per line, up to 32.

• Headline — Read a real news headline with its location blanked out, then pinpoint where it happened by tapping that spot on the world map. 5 headlines each day.

• Squishy Billiards — Drag and release to shoot the cue ball around a table of squishy blobs that merge when 2 of the same color touch. Sink every ball except the infected ones: pot the 8-ball last and clear each bomb before its fuse hits 0. Pocketing an infected ball costs 2 extra shots, and sinking the 8-ball early re-racks the table. Fewest shots wins.

• Seedle — Fill a 3×3 plot with the crops and boosters you're dealt, working around rocks that block spaces. Each tile scores its base value modified by its own rule — +18 on the center, -4 per adjacent crop, x2 to neighbors from a booster — so the same tile is worth more or less depending on where it lands. Place everything, then harvest to score your layout and chase an S rank.

• Analog Watch — Read 3 analog clock faces and type each time as fast as you can. The daily runs in expert mode — hours, minutes and seconds, 60 seconds per clock, no retries. Near-misses still earn partial points, so your score balances speed against accuracy. Freeplay adds 4 difficulty levels.

• 18 Words — Unscramble a jumble of letters into a word that uses all of them, 18 times in a row, with the words getting longer as you go. One clock runs the whole game and each correct answer adds time back — let it hit 0 and the run ends.

• Letterinth — Starting from the center of a letter grid, trace a continuous path through adjacent cells to spell out a hidden quotation and escape the maze. Every open cell is used exactly once.

• Marathondle — Two Marathon-themed guessing modes. In Weapon mode, identify the day's weapon from its category, rarity, ammo type, fire mode, and fire type in 5 guesses. In Core mode, read an ability description and name the core it belongs to plus the runner who uses it, also in 5 guesses.

• MeloGuessr — A song plays and you pin its geographic origin on a world map. 5 rounds, scored on how close the pin lands and how fast you place it.

• Nerdcube - Dabble — Drag letters from a 14-tile rack onto a crossword-style grid to spell valid words over 4 turns, connecting each new word to the ones already placed. Coloured bonus squares multiply letter and word scores, and using more of your tiles earns extra points at the end. Aim for the highest total score.

• Past Puzzle — Read a short historical fact, then type the 4-digit year it happened using the number pad. You get 4 attempts, and each guess reveals how close you are so you can narrow down the exact year.

• Peekpedia — You are shown a photo from a mystery Wikipedia article and type which article it belongs to. Each wrong guess or skip reveals another image from the same article, up to 5 in total. Identify the article using as few images as possible.

• PokeCryptic — Solve a single cryptic crossword clue whose answer is always a Pokémon-related term, such as a Pokémon, move, item, ability, location, or trainer. Type the answer letter by letter using the on-screen keyboard. Reveal hints like the definition, wordplay indicators, or a letter if you get stuck, but each hint adds to your golf-style par score.

• Quiple — Sort 15 items into 5 groups of 3, where each group shares a connection based on a stated theme, such as songs by the same band. Select 3 items you think belong together and submit. You can make up to 4 incorrect guesses before the game ends.

Recently removed games

• Tarkovdle — Abandoned, the domain is no longer accessible.
• Relatle — Avoid this one, it redirects to a scammy website.
• Macrodle — Abandoned, no longer at the domain.
• Septle — Highly suspicious, the domain redirects to an empty page.
• Songless Game — The site is not responsive anymore. :(
• Revertle — The board no longer renders any game. :(
• Unzoomed — Now requires an account to play.

The full list lives at dles.gg/graveyard.

In the meantime in the world of DLES

I've noticed 2 successful launches: 18 words went viral on HackerNews, earning a respectable 1155 upvotes and so did also Analog Watch which also went viral on HackerNews with 106 upvotes. Interestingly both of these games have a time pressure built in, 18 words have a 30 seconds countdown for each word that needs assembly while Analog Watch pressures you to read time as quickly as you can, which is surprisingly hard. They were both an instant add to the collection.

Improvements to DLES.gg

The big one is a full redesign. The whole site now runs on one shared set of buttons, cards and colours instead of the forty slightly different versions I'd accumulated over time, so things finally look like they belong together. A few concrete bits:

1. "Top games" in the nav now covers Top rated and Most popular, and also Newest, Oldest, A-Z and Z-A if you like your lists ordered a certain way.
2. Links to Assets and the Graveyard got promoted to a more prominent spot in the main navbar, btw did I mention Assets already? I don't think so, I'll try to write about it one day in full, but TLDR is I'm trying to collect useful and free assets daily games, you can find ready to use and license free word lists, as well as websites with free pictures like Unsplash, sounds, even 3D assets.
3. New game status: DISCONTINUED - used for games I would previously just removed, these are no longer actively maintained, no new games are being added, but their archive is still playable. These are now back in the collection with a little warning on the top, cause you know, nostalgia and stuff.

That's it.

You managed to read all the way here again? You are awesome!

Please hit that reply button if have any thoughts or ideas you'd like to tell me, or even if you just like to say hi! Hello 👋

Stay puzzling,

Peter