Alphalock

Alphalock looks like Wordle at first: a grid of rows, a keyboard, and a hidden word to find. The difference is in the feedback. Instead of colouring each letter, the game puts a small box of squares beside your guess. A green square means one of your letters is in the right spot, a yellow one means one is in the word but somewhere else, and grey squares stand for letters that are not in it. The squares do not line up with the letters, so you have to work out which letter earned which colour.

That turns each day into a deduction puzzle more than a vocabulary one. You get ten goes for the four-letter word, and a single guess rarely tells you much on its own; the answer comes from comparing guesses. With a setting turned on, you can tap letters in the grid to change their colour as notes to yourself while you reason it out. A bigger Alphalock with a five-letter answer is a separate daily puzzle on the same site.

The game was designed by Elizabeth Wilson, who says it grew out of her earlier daily number game PADLOCK, and her husband Mark built the site over a weekend in April 2024. It is free in the browser with ads, keeps your streak and results, and lets you choose whether the day turns over at midnight UTC or at your local midnight. It suits Wordle players who want less luck and more logic.