I’ve often found that a lot of the daily games that the internet has to offer bored me quickly. I did wordle, connections and even tried things like Guess the Game. They’re all fine distractions, but I couldn’t stay interested. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far from the most clever person and a lot of those puzzled would stump me and then after a while I’d get annoyed and stop doing them. No shame in admitting your own skill issue, right?
The other day I stumbled upon a different daily game called Daily Orbs. It was a Northernlion video that popped up as recommended and because it looked interesting enough I watched the video and then immediately bookmarked the puzzles. I’ve been doing them ever since and even went back to do older versions.
The concept of these puzzles is simple. Each day there are four puzzles. Some of them are about the origin of words, about matching flags to countries, matching states to part of their name, linking video game objects to the games they’re in, linking old company names to their new ones, distinguishing between three different things for several names or images, you get the point. Each day gives you four unique puzzles that require different skills or knowledge. The goal is to get six orbs, which means you either have to nail two puzzles for three orbs each, or get them spread out among multiple puzzles.
What I like about this system is that even on days where I didn’t know a lot, I was almost always able to get at least four orbs. And on a really good day I would get up to ten orbs. It makes you feel like there’s always something you know, and you’re not totally stupid. Wordle simply outstayed its welcome, but Connections made me feel dumb. This game makes me feel smart on some days and less smart on other days and that makes it much more fun.
When it comes to puzzles, I think it’s important that they feel possible. Not that they are possible, every puzzle should be possible if you’re smart enough, but if I feel like I’m too dumb for your puzzle, that’s not a nice feeling. That doesn’t mean your puzzle is bad, it just means the puzzle and I are mismatched. My dad was doing a puzzle where he had 1600 names and with a bunch of clues he had to eliminate all but one of the names to find out who was the murderer in a story. It’s a fun concept, but we were left with three names instead of one and neither of us could figure out what he did wrong. That’s very frustrating. None of those issues here, because once you’re done, you can of course just reveal the answer.
There’s not much more to this post. I’ve been taking a break from writing for a few days and wanted to ease back into it. Tomorrow I’ll be writing the afterword for Hesitant Hero volume 5, which will go live on Friday. It’s a special one so look forward to it. Thanks for reading!
