About

Whird publishes a short set of daily puzzles, one of each, every day. Each one has a single answer and gives you a fixed number of attempts. Nothing is decided by a random draw after you have committed: if you reason carefully, you can finish.

What these puzzles are

Deduction puzzles built from language, history and logic. Some are about the words themselves — where they came from, what they mean. Others ask you to place an event in time, or to spot why an argument falls apart. They all share one property: the answer is something you work out, not something you either happen to remember or you don't.

What they are not

They are not brain training. There is no evidence that a daily puzzle makes you measurably cleverer, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What a good puzzle does give you is a few minutes of real concentration and, now and then, the pleasure of understanding something you didn't before. That is the whole offer.

They are also not tests. There is no account, no leaderboard, and no comparison with anyone else. Your streak lives in your own browser and nobody else can see it.

How the puzzles are chosen

The daily puzzle is derived from the date, so every player gets the same puzzle on the same day and nobody can reroll for an easier one. Puzzles change at midnight UTC.

Sources

Language puzzles are checked against published etymological references. Where a scholarly consensus does not exist, the puzzle says so rather than picking a side. Full attribution is on the credits page.

Who makes this

Whird is written and maintained by brynsites. Corrections and disagreements are welcome — across this many subjects, being confidently wrong is easy, and a puzzle that cannot be corrected is not worth playing.

Part of brynsites.com, where contact details live.