Ponder Club and PerDiem are the easiest pair to compare, because both are free. Ponder Club lists 13 daily games and PerDiem has 23. Neither needs an account to play.
PerDiem Games isn't affiliated with Ponder Club. What we say about its games comes from its own site (ponderclub.co) as of October 2026, which also describes its pricing and its archives. Check it for current details.
The closest pairs
Code Breaker and Enigma. Both are Mastermind-style. Ponder Club's Code Breaker has you crack a four-color code. Enigma hides four pegs in six colors, repeats allowed, gives you eight tries, and uses pins to tell you how close each guess came. If you like one, you'll like the other. The Enigma guide explains how to read the pins.
Mini 5x5 and Mini. Same idea, same size. Ours is a 5 by 5 crossword with two opposite corners cut out, so the answers run mostly 4 and 5 letters. For something bigger, Midi is a themeless crossword that grows from 9 by 9 to 11 by 11 across the week.
Word Search and Throughline. Ponder Club's Word Search asks you to find the day's words in a letter grid. Throughline is a word search with a theme clue, a 6 by 8 board, and every letter used exactly once, including a key word that crosses the whole board.
Common Three and Association. These are both grouping puzzles, but they're built differently. Common Three has you sort seven words into a three-circle Venn diagram. Association has sixteen words in four groups of four, with four mistakes allowed. If you like one shape, try the other.
Solitaire and Stacks or Delve. Ponder Club has a daily Klondike where everyone gets the same deal, and Mahjong Solitaire. Stacks and Delve are card puzzles of a different kind. Stacks asks you to chain touching cards that share a suit or rank. Delve is a dungeon where you clear a deck before your health runs out.
The games only we have
Ponder Club's list is mostly familiar formats, some with a twist. PerDiem's has more games built around one strange idea that you have to figure out.
- Packline. You gerrymander a map so a minority of voters wins most of the districts. How to play.
- Hearsay. Everyone's honest or a liar, and the clues are your only evidence. How to play.
- Scope. A control panel with no labels, and a wave to match. How to play.
- Ticker. Ninety seconds of play-money trading on a fictional stock. How to play.
- Exhibit. A jigsaw that zooms out in four rounds until a real painting is whole.
Where Ponder Club is ahead
It has formats we don't, like Wordie, Double Up, Digit Shift and Color Flood. Several of its originals, like Reverse Sweeper, where you find hidden geese, and Slideways, have no PerDiem match.
If you play Ponder Club every day, you probably have room for a few more. Try Enigma first, since you already know how it works. Then try Hearsay.