Daily puzzles where letters are worth numbers

A small, strange corner of the daily-puzzle world: games where a word has a value, and the number is as much the puzzle as the word. Here is every free one we could find, what each actually asks of you, and which popular games get filed here by mistake.

The distinction that sorts the whole category

Most "maths puzzle" round-ups lump two very different things together. It is worth separating them, because they use different parts of your brain and people who love one often bounce off the other.

In a letter-value game you need vocabulary. The arithmetic is downstream of a word you have to think of or identify. In a number game with a Wordle-style interface, such as Mathler or Nerdle, there are no words at all: the grid and the green tiles are borrowed, the content is pure arithmetic. Both are good. They are not the same hobby.

1. Letters carry a number value

The real category. In each of these, knowing the word is only half the job.

SumHunt: spell words to hit an exact target

Every letter scores its place in the alphabet, A=1 to Z=26. You get eighteen tiles and a target number, and you spell words and chain them with +, − and ×, evaluated left to right rather than BODMAS, until your running total lands on the target exactly. One puzzle a day, a cryptic-flavoured clue each morning, themed every day. Free, no sign-up, browser. Ours.

Wordnumble: find the arithmetic back to the target

The reverse of ours, and the closest thing to it. A five-letter word becomes five numbers by the same A=1…Z=26 rule; those digits are scrambled into a target, and your job is to rebuild the path using all five numbers and each of + − × ÷ at least once. Wordnumble hands you the word and asks for the sum; SumHunt hands you the sum and asks for the words. Free, no accounts, no paywall. Its own pages disagree about whether the word is a shared daily one or random, so we will not claim either. There is a "new word" button, so you can certainly keep playing.

ScrabWordle: Wordle with the score as a clue

Ordinary Wordle rules, except you are also told the target word's Scrabble value. That one extra number is a surprisingly sharp constraint: it rules out huge swathes of the dictionary before you have guessed anything. Daily plus unlimited, free, browser.

Anagramle: Wordle meets Scrabble scoring

Letter tiles carry their Scrabble values and the scoring is part of the puzzle rather than decoration. Daily and practice modes, free. Worth knowing it is a hobby project on a free host: lovely, but not a company, so play it while it is there.

WordSum: deduce the word from its total app only, and no longer free

The purest version of the idea: a hidden word's letters are summed to a target and you work backwards to the word. We would recommend it except for two things. The web version has gone (its old domains no longer resolve), and it is now an app with a subscription after a seven-day trial. Listed because it belongs in the category, flagged because "free daily browser puzzle" no longer describes it.

2. Scrabble-scoring dailies

One step out: letters carry values, but there is no target to land on. You are maximising a score rather than hitting a number. Adjacent enough that if you like the games above you will probably like these.

Lettergrams

Twelve tiles onto a five-by-five board with bonus squares; place them for the highest Scrabble-style score. Daily, free.

LETTERS

A shared daily grid, tap to spell, multiplier tiles, and Classic, Golf and Timed modes. Daily, free.

3. Often confused with these, but no words involved

These are excellent games and they are not letter-value puzzles. If you arrived looking for "a word game with maths in it", these are the ones you will be offered, and they are the ones you may be disappointed by, because there is no vocabulary in them at all.

Which should you play?

Honestly: if you want pure arithmetic, play Mathler. It is the most polished thing in this whole list and it has been refined for years. If you want Wordle with one extra constraint, ScrabWordle is the gentlest step across. If you want the word and the number to fight each other, that is the narrow thing SumHunt and Wordnumble do, from opposite ends.

One observation from assembling this, offered as what we found rather than as a fact: we could not find another game that gives you a target and asks you to find the words: spelling from a rack and combining whole-word totals to land on a number. Eight different searches, and the closest neighbours all hand you the word first. If we have missed one, we would genuinely like to know; this page is better with it than without it.

Common questions

What is a letter-value or "word value" game?

Any puzzle where a word is worth a number, usually A=1, B=2 up to Z=26, or sometimes Scrabble tile values. The number turns vocabulary into arithmetic, so a word can be the right idea and still the wrong answer.

Are any of them free?

Yes. SumHunt, Wordnumble, ScrabWordle, Anagramle, Lettergrams and LETTERS are all free in a browser with no sign-up. WordSum used to be and is now a paid app.

Is there a daily one, like Wordle?

SumHunt is one puzzle a day, rolling over at midnight UTC. ScrabWordle, Lettergrams and LETTERS also run daily. Wordnumble's own site is inconsistent about whether its word is a shared daily one.

Do I need to be good at maths?

For the letter-value games, no. It rarely goes beyond adding two-digit numbers, and the difficulty lives in the words. For Mathler and Nerdle the arithmetic is the puzzle, so that is a different ask.

What happened to Summary?

Summary, a daily cryptarithm that described itself as "the number game that thinks it's a word game", ran from January to August 2024 and closed. Its archive of 225 puzzles is still playable, but it is no longer a daily. We mention it because other lists still carry it as live.