Do you consider yourself a puzzle enthusiast? Are puzzles your game of choice and something you consistently turn to in your downtime? Puzzles can be wonderfully engaging, relaxing, challenging, and fun and yet offer a variety of educational and health benefits. Puzzles can help with short-term memory, mental speed, and visual-spatial reasoning. Cognitive skills are required, and they use the right and left hemispheres of the brain. In other words, it’s a full brain workout.
But for all the fun they offer, puzzles can also be very challenging, so much so that sometimes people end up feeling discouraged. If that sounds familiar, then you’re going to want to check out these four great online tools that are meant for puzzle enthusiasts.
Playing a Word Puzzle Game Like Scrabble – This Unscrambler Can Help
Scrabble is one of the most popular word puzzle games out there. There is both the adult version and a kid-friendly one, so just about everyone can get in on the challenge and vocabulary-building fun.
But for those who consider themselves Scrabble enthusiasts, you know better than anyone how frustrating it can be to find yourself stuck with a bunch of random letters that seemingly don’t work together. This is when you can use an app to help with games like Scrabble where you plug in all the letters and then unscramble them. Suddenly you won’t be stuck, and you can form some pretty impressive high-scoring words. This kind of online tool can also be helpful for kids who want to be able to play Scrabble but are struggling since their vocabulary isn’t that of an adult.
Thesaurus – A Go-To Tool for Word Puzzles
Speaking of Scrabble, word puzzles are popular in general and come in all different shapes and sizes. The rules can differ, and the goal of the game may differ, but one online tool that is universal in terms of helpfulness is the thesaurus.
The online version is so quick and easy; simply type in the word you want to find a synonym for and you will get instant results. It’s one of those tools that once you start using, you’ll wonder how you managed without it. It’s even useful for day-to-day activities, not just word puzzles.
Crossword Puzzles Can Require More Analytical Tools
How many times have you been challenged by a crossword puzzle only to find yourself giving up? It tends to be just one or two words that you can’t get, but it’s enough to cause the whole puzzle to be frustrating. Not to worry as there are online tools that can help with these puzzles too. Unlike other puzzles, however, these need to be analytical.
Some online crossword puzzle solver tools you may want to check out include:
- AllWords
- One Across
- AskOxford
- Crossword Clue Solver
- CrossTips
Some of these tools have more features than others. For example, they can offer multiple languages, they can be used for various word-based puzzles and games, they ask for clue and patterns, and so forth.
Help for Sudoku Can Also Be Found
While not a word puzzle, Sudoku can be equally as fun and challenging. This is a numbers-based puzzle that players find highly addictive. Sudoku puzzles vary in size and skill level, so you can push yourself with this one. So, what happens if you can’t solve the puzzle no matter how hard you try? Give an online Sudoku checker a try. These are online tools that allow you to type in the puzzle and then perform an instant check.
All of these tools are meant to give you extra help when needed no matter what your favorite type of puzzle is.