Coffee and puzzle first: how a daily puzzle became part of my morning

I am not a morning person. For a long time my mornings started with the phone: messages, news, a bit of social networks scrolling and then twenty-thirty minutes were gone and I was already late and slightly annoyed. At some point this changed into something much simpler. Now I make my coffee, open one daily word puzzle, solve it, and then I start working. At first I was starting my day with Wordle but then after creating Smartle, of course I choose to play my own game.

There is a reason why I’ve chosen a daily word game for my mornings and not any other free browser game or some other activity. The daily puzzle has an end. This is the big difference from the other games or the news and social networks feeds. A feed never finishes, it just goes on and on until you feel bad and close it. A daily puzzle is one puzzle. When it is solved, it is solved and the game itself tells you “come back tomorrow”. So the stop is built in, it is already timeboxed and it fits into my morning. I don’t need discipline to stop - the puzzle stops for me.

Another reason is that I really like coffee and I like doing something pleasant while having my first cup in the morning. I don’t want to start work just yet. So my mornings start like this - the kettle is on, the tab is open and by the time the cup is ready I am already looking at the puzzle board. Often the coffee and the puzzle finish around the same time. On harder days the coffee gets cold while I’m trying to find the solution. I decided to accept this as part of the game.

What I also like about solving word puzzles in the mornings is that it wakes the brain up gently. And I think people figured it out quite some time ago. Before the internet and digital days my father loved to start the morning with reading a newspaper and solving crosswords and sudokus there. Emails and messages require some action - even if not immediately. A puzzle wants nothing, it just sits there and waits to be solved. You read the clues, you try something, it works or it doesn’t and after a couple of minutes the head is running. And there is the small win in it too: whatever the day brings later, one thing is already solved before and I’m already a winner. I like starting the day with that feeling.

Sometimes if I’m not in the mood for a daily word puzzle and want to start with logic instead of words, I play Hex Sense daily level (daily challenge). Usually I solve it much faster than a word puzzle. I was very good at Minesweeper so with Hex Sense it only takes me a couple of minutes to find the safe path for Mochi.

On slow mornings I go for Clean! Daily Challenge. I tap tiles, colors change, pop, appear again and the board slowly becomes clean. I always take my time with it and never hurry despite the timer. It is calm in a way that matches the first coffee very well. Anyway, this is the whole idea. One coffee, one puzzle, a couple of minutes of peace and the day starts a bit better. It costs nothing to try, because all our puzzle games are free and run right in the browser, with no download and no account.

I am curious about your version of this. Do you play your daily puzzle in the morning, at lunch or in the evening before sleep or just at random times during the day? Tell us in our Discord server, we read everything there.