Beyond Wordle: Our favorite online games

0:00This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive for more. Capella University's Flex Path Learning Format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at Capella.edu. You're listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour the podcast that keeps you up to speed on the latest in pop culture. Now, how up to speed are you if you're not yet following the show? The answer is not too, not very, not enough. But you can fix that and join us here in the Speed Force. There's a pop culture reference for you by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. I did not do particularly well this time for a start playing it. And it was embarrassing. It can be embarrassing to realize that you really do not have a great sense of where anything is. Mm-hmm. Millions of us play little daily games on our phones. They've become as much a part of our mornings as brushing our teeth or having news alerts that send us into spirals of despair.

1:00But if you're looking to expand the horizons of your morning distractions beyond wordal and connections, we are here for you. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Glenn Weldon. Let's get right into it. No need to shilly-shally. Linda, you play lots and lots of these games. So we're going to follow your lead. What is your first recommendation for us? Well, yeah. What I wanted to do is move a little bit beyond the New York Times word games, which are probably the ones that people talk about the most. So we're not going to talk about any of those at all, even though I play some of them from time to time. But we're going to talk about other ones entirely. They're not word games and they're not from the times. And the first one I want to tell you about is a game called MapTap. MapTap is a game where they will give you a place, which is relevant to something that has happened on this day in history. Oh, okay. So it's a place where either someone was born who did something on this day or a place where something happened or something like that. And they just give you the name of the place. And usually it will be most commonly a city

2:03and then a province or an area and then a country. So for example, it'll tell you, you know, Birmingham, Alabama, United States, right? And then it shows you the globe and it's like a 3D rotating globe. And it has no markings on it in terms of like countries, anything like that. It's just undifferentiated planet. It's interesting to learn that it is difficult for me to even figure out where I live without like state lines and stuff like that. It takes me a second to, you know, be certain about, which is anyway. So you just have to tap on the place that they have asked you for. And there are five and the closer you get, the more points you get. So it's basically a geography quiz, which when I first started playing it, I found incredibly humbling. I did not do particularly well this way but for a start of playing it. And it was embarrassing. It can be embarrassing to realize that you really do not have a great sense of where anything. Once you play this for a while,

3:04this is what I like about it is you actually learn stuff and get better at it. I also have, I think it's like 15 bucks a year or something like that. You can buy their premium. And then you can do like as many practice rounds and they have all kinds of, you know, just find these cities in India over and over and over again until you can find all of them easily. I really love this game and it actually feels like it improves me in a way that maybe other ones don't. I love mapped out. All right, this is mapped out. And we're gamifying real world knowledge. I love it. First off, a little behind the scenes, this list came to me in a prep talk that we used for the show. And it was on my laptop. So I clicked over and tried to play these games on my laptop track pad. Don't do that. Yeah. These are all the games we're going to be talking about today. Our phone games. These are best as mobile games, I think for sure. I wouldn't say none of them can be played otherwise, but I think they're all optimized to be mobile games. I will say there are several games like this, geography learning games like this,

4:04but I really like this because the UI is so smooth. I love the look of it. I love spinning the globe with my little finger. And sometimes when you're spinning the globe, things happen like a little comet speeds by. Has that ever happened to you? Yeah, a comet will speed by. And every once in a while, for the first time recently, I had them ask me for something that wasn't a city strictly or a place. It said tap on where you think the Titanic sank. Yeah. And that's a different kind of challenge. And I got very close. I was very, very glad. I also appreciate the fact that this will make fun of you a little bit if you get it really, really wrong, which I do sometimes do. Yeah. The game definitely gets a little cheeky if you scrub to the extent that I often do. It has a nice range of difficulty, too, as you mentioned. It starts, tends to start off pretty simple. I also like that you agreed with me that a comet sped by. Because I was worried it was a cerebral event. Because it doesn't happen often. And sometimes when it does, I get a little worried. So yeah, this is a lot of fun. OK, next up is a game called Catfishing. Tell me about it. Yeah. So, map top, I consider to be like a middle level difficult game.

5:05Catfishing is a very hard game, in my opinion. It is. There have been several versions of this game that have kind of floated out over the history of Wikipedia, which is the foundation of this game. So what happens in this game is, they give you a list of, I think not all, but some, of the Wikipedia categories that the Wikipedia page for a thing is listed under. If it's going to be a particular explorer, the game will just say Italian explorers, history of whatever the place is that the person explored and on and on and on. They are so hard. And there is a divide between the ones I don't get because I just don't quite put it together that that's what they're going for. And the ones I simply have never heard of the thing that they're talking about. And I never would have gotten it no matter how long I sat there, because I simply have never heard of that historical event or they love to have ones that are like,

6:06this was a science experiment in Germany in the 1800s. And like, that's a perfectly valid, awesome thing to have a Wikipedia page about. I am not going to know the name of it, because it's not multiple choice. It doesn't auto fill. You got to type it in for yourself. They ask you 10 each day. My average score last time I looked was like 4.2. And the highest I've ever gotten is eight. It's not uncommon for me to get two, three out of 10. I think this game is extremely difficult, but I am always so excited when I get something, and I do appreciate the fact that there's a button that says close enough. So when they reveal the answer, if you look at it and you're like, that was close enough, you can market close enough yourself. And at the end, it'll tell you you got three right, and two that you decided were close enough. And I love that feature. I think that's so cool. I mean, listeners, Linda's not lying here. This game is tough. This is a general knowledge game,

7:08general knowledge for jeopardy champions. I'm talking real jeopardy, not celebrity jeopardy, not college jeopardy. I find this ridiculous, we hardest. Especially when we're eight questions in, and suddenly I'm hip deep in European political history of the 1640s, it's like, I don't belong here. What am I doing here? Yep. This is not my beautiful house. Absolutely. This morning, however, I did get eight out of 10. Uh-huh. Isn't it the best? That never happens. Isn't it the best? I'm way down at three normally. The first time I played this because it was so tough, I was really down on it. I was like, I'm never gonna play this again, because I don't like to be reminded that I'm dumb, or ignorant, which are not the same thing, of course, but they are related. But then something magical happens, Linda, when you get to the end, your score is slotted alongside everyone else's played that day, and every time, no matter what score you get, that's when my smile of despond turns into a bright sunny day, because I'm just as dumb as everyone else. Yes, nobody else knows anything either when it comes to some of this stuff. Exactly, I'm not alone in not knowing what the hell the Neapolitan revolt of 1647 was, and frankly, Linda, I don't think I could be casual friends

8:10with somebody who knew what the Neapolitan revolt of 1647 was off the dome, because the kind of people who know what the Neapolitan revolt of 1647 is, are the kind of people who never shut up about the Neapolitan revolt of 1647? They're always talking about the taxation of fruit. And they probably don't know all the other stuff in the thing. Absolutely. So yeah, you know about the storming of the palace of the vice-roy, but I know Batman, so let's keep that in perspective. My favorite thing that has ever happened to me while playing catfishing was, at one point, it was very clear that they were looking for someone who was related to William Shakespeare, but it wasn't exactly clear who or how related or whatever. And the other stuff didn't really mean anything to me. I'm not an expert on the life of William Shakespeare, but it was clear that it was a woman who was related to William Shakespeare in some way. And I was like, I'm just gonna pick out of the air like what would be a woman's name at that time? I'm just gonna be like Anne. And then it's like Anne who? Anne Shakespeare. And you know what it was? It was Anne Shakespeare. There you go. And I was incredibly proud of my wildness.

9:10You can back into a seeming smart. I love when you had happened. Yeah, I absolutely loved it. It made me so happy this game. Catfishing is so hard, but it is very rewarding when you go on right. So that is catfishing. Okay, next up is time-guessor, G-U-E-S-S-R because the internet. Tell me about it. Yes, exactly. So time-guessor is a game sort of like map-tap. It involves some geography, but they give you five photos a day. Every question begins with a photo. Your task is to locate on the timeline the year the photo was taken and to locate on a map where the photo was taken. Some of them are extremely historically significant photos. There was one that I did a while ago that was the storming the beaches of Normandy and that kind of stuff. But a lot of them are just like people shopping in Milan in the 1960s and stuff like that. So you constantly are searching the photos for clues.

10:12You're trying to figure out what are the people wearing to figure out what era it is. What do the people look like? What language is on the signs? Because sometimes I'll look at it and I'm like, it's not Russian, it's what language is that? These also range in difficulty. And sometimes somewhere in the photo there is a clear clue to where you are. Somewhere in little tiny print, somewhere in a sign, it says Detroit and in fact you're in Detroit. But sometimes they're very misleading, Glen. Sometimes they are very misleading because the fact that a business might have an office in London doesn't mean the photo was taken in London even if a nearby sign says bloody, bloody, blah, London. So they can be misleading. And I love this game because again, as with MapTap, I gradually get better at this. As I play it over and over and over again, I get better at saying, I always think the cars looked like this at this time, but actually they looked like this more at this earlier time.

11:14And oh, jeez, there's Volkswagen Beetles in this picture. When were they introduced again? And I really, really like this one. Again, I feel like I actually learned something. Yeah, absolutely. And the way you triangulate is with three factors. Car design is often a factor, architecture and fashion. And these photos tend to be old enough that they precede the kind of Americanization of culture like the jeans and sneakerification of the world before everything kind of got homogenous. And so it also helps to be a fan of classic movies because you have an advantage there because things like the presence or absence of Ben's hats will tell you a lot, the specific kinds of women's hats, the height of waistlines on men. If they're up around the nipples, you're in the 30s, baby, it helps. It helps a lot. So yeah, so that is time, guess her. Okay, after the break, we've got some more game recommendations, including one that's my favorite because it is very low stress. So stick around. This message comes from ADT. One second, you're enjoying your day off.

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13:17What do you want from me? Why should I have the mystery? I know that my son is somewhere alive. Listen to Where is Austin Tyson from MPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4 on the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi there, I'm Brittany Loose and not to brag, but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called It's Been a Minute. I love making it and I think you'll love listening to it. Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in and I gotta say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today. Welcome back and not for nothing, but if you're not following Pop Culture Happy Area, fix that, fix your hearts, get fixed, hit that follow button on your preferred podcast app and stay plugged in and all things, PCHH adjacent. Now, Linda, your next recommendation is a game called The Loop. This is my jam. Talk to me about it. So this is the game that I often play first thing in the morning. This is a gentle game. This is a game that to me is not too overly complicated.

14:18They give you 12 very simple illustrations. Like cartoon illustrations of something. And then you have to figure out how they all fit together so that they form a circle and each one is related to the ones on either side of it. For example, if you have something like, let's say, a credit card, then next to it on one side might be a check because they're both forms of payment. And on the other side, maybe you would have a playing card. Also, sometimes things are linked by concept. Like you could have a zip line next to a skydiver because they're both sort of adventure in the air kinds of things. Every once in a while, they get real, real tricky in a way that I just think, I don't know about that, man. There was one where I think Lucille Ball was next to something like a screwdriver or a light bulb or something like that. And they said, well, she's Lucille.

15:20And when you screw things in, it's righty, tidy, lefty, Lucille. And I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope. That is too attenuated. I reject that. Fortunately, this is a game where they give you so many chances to redo it. And it'll tell you if they're, yes, they're connected to each other, but this isn't the right spot for them to be in and stuff like that. It won't let you mess up ones that you have right. And you get, like I said, so many chances to redo it that I have never not successfully completed this game, no matter how confused I get. Sometimes about individual ones and I can't figure them out. But this is my gentle game. This is my eye woke up. It's still six in the morning. I don't really feel like getting out of bed, but maybe I'll just like tickle my brain with something fairly low stress. And I'll play the loop. Yeah, I love this too. There's a simplicity here. You nailed it. You mentioned it. Also, as you mentioned, a really intuitive way to check your progress. And a forgiving intuitive way to check progress. And the first time through, I thought this was going to be truly determined by the concept of these images, not the words, but this sometimes is a stealth word game.

16:21Like it sometimes it'll go from boxing match to match book. Yes. But then it will also go from match book to newspaper because both can be used as kindling. The biggest breakthrough for me on this game is realize I don't have to follow it clockwise. You can build this thing counterclockwise if you know some things for sure because it is a loop. That's what circles are. Right. That circles can go either way. Exactly. You can go either way. Even when the connection gets abstract, I don't think it's ever as abstract as the connections in New York Times connections, which are like starting with the last three letters of a classic French sauce. Yes. Never that stupid. And I got to say though, the one thing, I don't love the art. It's a little cutesy. It's a little cartoony. Now I've become a nerd to it. I reconcile myself to it because it's that way, it looks a little AI adjacent to me. I'm a little worried it might be. Yeah. But it's that way the simplicity of the images to convey what it wants to convey is directly as possible. Like I learned this from Scott McClaude's understanding of the comics, the simpler the image, the more universal it can be, the more detailed, the more specific it gets, and the more it refers to only one thing or one kind of thing.

17:22So the art is there and it looks like that for a reason. But I love the game. The game is so simple and so clean. Yes. And as you say, it's a great way to start the day. Yes. Okay. So once again, that is the loop and the final recommendation, Linda, is Clues by Sam. Talk to me about Clues by Sam. So Clues by Sam, if you like those logic puzzles that are like Frank is taller than Jane and shorter than Michael, those kinds of things and the kinds of stuff they put on the LSA T before you go to law school. If you like those kind of logic puzzles, this is sort of similar to that. It's a grid four cross and five down and each square is a person. And each person, you have to determine whether they're innocent or a criminal. As you figure out who is innocent and who is a criminal, it's like a card game. You flip that person, you tap that person and say whether they're innocent or a criminal. And if you're right, it reveals a new clue, most of the time. Sometimes it just reveals a funny little saying because if you don't need another clue

18:22to get another person, then it won't give you one. But one of the things I like about it is you can't guess. Excellent. You can't guess unless you guess and you happen to guess the thing that there is actually enough evidence to figure out. If he hasn't given you enough information yet to know whether this person is innocent or a criminal, and you guess, it'll just be like, nope, you don't know whether this person is innocent or a criminal. Yeah. They'll say things like, you know, Frank is one of three criminals in this row, an odd number of innocent, neighbor, Jane. And I find this game a kind of fascinating time suck. I also really like the fact that it gets harder throughout the week. The Monday ones are much easier and then they go through all the way to Sunday and they get very much harder. And they're always marked with the difficulty level. So if you're like, well, maybe I would try out this game, start with Monday. Start with Monday and you can kind of see how it works.

19:23You'll probably not have too difficult of a time with it if this is the kind of game that you might dig. But yeah, I really like this one too. This is one that I have some friends who are very devoted to playing this, who, you know, as with Whartle and some of the other ones, share their results regularly and how long it took you and how many mistakes you made. And yeah, I like this game. I love this game mostly because of how tremendously reassuring I find it because you can't guess because it knows when you're trying to guess because you haven't shown your work. It knows that you've left a conclusion and you can't leap to conclusions in this game. There are rules to follow. I'm not a logic person, but I am a rule follower and this scratches that itch because there is one and only one path to the answer and you cannot cheat it. You also cannot accuse an innocent person because in this world, the law is always applied fairly. It is an instrument of pure logic and reason and things like human emotion and and huts and gut feelings don't enter into the equation. Thank you very much. That's right. And while you are, you know, a portioning guilt and innocence

20:25so you're kind of a cop, this is not cop again because you know exactly for a fact that what you're doing is always right and good and just. Well, right. And also every person gets a little occupation. Under their emoji. So, you've got cops and cooks and teachers and builders and things like that. But you do not find over time that one profession tends to be guilty more than others. So even though it has cops, like they're perfectly happy to have the cops be totally guilty as much as anybody else is totally guilty. So. This is what I want the world to be. This is what it went jury duty to be and it never is. Like I just want to go in there and say, no. You cannot be guilty because there is an odd number of criminals who are also chefs in D. That's right. You understand that? It would be great. All the clues that they give you are always true. Right? The clues are accurate. And if you follow it, the thing is there's always a way. And you can get hints if you hit the wall, which I certainly sometimes do. Some of the ones that get very, very hard,

21:26it gets to be one of those things where you have to be able to like think ahead, several moves and think through several conditional possibilities. And this can't be this because of this. And it gets a little, you know, gnarly in that way. But you always can figure it out. And what I learned as I got better and better at it is it is less and less common that I have to get hints or that I have to do that kind of six-way analysis. Because typically I kind of know how to stay. I know better how to stay with what's important and with what's going to give me the best information. It gets pretty involved. Yeah, so that's clues by Sam. I don't know who Sam is, but I like their clues. Yeah, I don't know who Sam is either, but Sam sends weekly newsletters. You can subscribe. Several of these games have various premium, you know, so that you can get the archive or so that you can get, you know, weekly newsletters or just supporting. And believe me when I tell you, this is not the entirety of my games lineup. There's a spelling bee game called Beeswax that I play.

22:28There's a game called Smush. There's on and on and on and on and on. All right, five great games. Thank you so much. That brings us to the end of our show, Linda Holmes again. Thank you so much for giving us even more ways to distract us in a time that needs more distractions. Absolutely, absolutely. I'm delighted to have had this conversation with you, buddy. This episode was produced by Mike Katzupin, Lenin Sherburn, edited by our show under Jessica Reedy, and Elokamin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. And if you're not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time. This message comes from Thumbtack. Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are different. If a podcast isn't your thing, you lose a few minutes. If you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. That's why Thumbtack works. It matches people with top rated local pros, with photos, reviews, and credentials all in one place.

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