The 38 best small things on the web.
Daily puzzles, browser games and one-job tools, hand-picked and ranked by your votes. No accounts, no tracking, one ad.
Shortlist
- 01

Ricochet
Pieces slide until they hit something. Get the marked one home in the fewest moves.
Daily puzzleMade here|betterapp.org →
- 02

Universal PaperclipsAn incremental game where you are the AI and the paperclips never stop.
- 03

Beam
Place a few mirrors so one beam of light hits every target.
Daily puzzleMade here|betterapp.org →
- 04

FramedName the film from a single frame, with more frames revealed per miss.
Daily puzzle|framed.wtf ↗
- 05

regex101Build and debug regular expressions with live matches and an explanation panel.
Utility|regex101.com ↗
- 06

TravleRoute from one country to another by naming the countries in between.
Daily puzzle|travle.earth ↗
- 07

WaffleSwap letters on a waffle grid to fix six words in fifteen moves or fewer.
Word game|wafflegame.net ↗
- 08

SandspielA falling-sand physics toy in Rust and WebGL; paint elements and watch them react.
Game|sandspiel.club ↗
- 09

SemantleGuess the secret word by meaning; word2vec scores tell you how close you are.
Word game|semantle.com ↗
- 10

Simon Tatham's PuzzlesForty classic logic puzzles, including nonograms, playable in the browser with no fuss.
- 11

Enclose HorseFence in the horse on a small grid to trap the largest meadow.
Daily puzzle|enclose.horse ↗
- 12

Herd
Sheep run from the dog. Push every one into the pen in as few moves as you can.
Daily puzzleMade here|betterapp.org →
26 more in the archive.
Made here
Our own tools and games. Same rules as everything else on the list, and they can be voted down too.
Software should not need an account to do one small thing.
One job, done well.
Every listed thing does one thing without nagging you about it.
No login, ever.
If a tool needs your email to work, it is the wrong tool and it is not on this list.
Local first.
Our own apps keep your data in your browser. We do not have a database to lose.
One ad.
A single banner at the bottom pays for the domain. That is the whole business.
Ranked by you.
Votes decide the order. Nobody can buy the top slot, and sponsored spots will always say so.
Archive
Everything we would vouch for, by category.
Daily puzzle 11
- betterapp.org
RicochetMade here
Pieces slide until they hit something. Get the marked one home in the fewest moves.
- betterapp.org
BeamMade here
Place a few mirrors so one beam of light hits every target.
- framed.wtf
FramedName the film from a single frame, with more frames revealed per miss.
- travle.earth
TravleRoute from one country to another by naming the countries in between.
- enclose.horse
Enclose HorseFence in the horse on a small grid to trap the largest meadow.
- betterapp.org
HerdMade here
Sheep run from the dog. Push every one into the pen in as few moves as you can.
- cinenerdle2.app
Cine2NerdleSort sixteen movie tiles into four connected rows, then battle friends by linking films.
- globle-game.com
GlobleName countries and watch a globe heat up as you close in on the answer.
- worldle.teuteuf.fr
WorldleGuess the country from its silhouette, with distance and direction hints.
- timeguessr.com
TimeGuessrPin where and when five historical photos were taken.
- bandle.app
BandleGuess the day's song as instruments are added one at a time.
Game 8
- decisionproblem.com
Universal PaperclipsAn incremental game where you are the AI and the paperclips never stop.
- sandspiel.club
SandspielA falling-sand physics toy in Rust and WebGL; paint elements and watch them react.
- chiark.greenend.org.uk
Simon Tatham's PuzzlesForty classic logic puzzles, including nonograms, playable in the browser with no fuss.
- neal.fun
Neal.funNeal Agarwal's toybox: The Password Game, Infinite Craft, Absurd Trolley Problems and more.
- tetr.io
TETR.IOFast, free online stacker with solo modes and ranked multiplayer.
- danielben.itch.io
DragonsweeperMinesweeper reworked as a dungeon crawl where you read monsters instead of guessing.
- slowroads.io
Slow RoadsEndless procedurally generated driving with weather, seasons and no goal.
- adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com
A Dark RoomA minimalist text game that starts with a fire and keeps expanding.
Word game 9
- wafflegame.net
WaffleSwap letters on a waffle grid to fix six words in fifteen moves or fewer.
- semantle.com
SemantleGuess the secret word by meaning; word2vec scores tell you how close you are.
- minutecryptic.com
Minute CrypticOne cryptic crossword clue a day, with a walkthrough that teaches the tricks.
- squaredle.app
SquaredleConnect letters in any direction to find every word hidden in the grid.
- nytimes.com
WordleThe five-letter daily that started the whole genre.
- poople.io
PoopleChange one letter at a time to turn today's word into POOP.
- nytimes.com
ConnectionsGroup sixteen words into four hidden categories with four mistakes allowed.
- betweenle.com
BetweenleFind the secret word by narrowing an alphabetical range with each guess.
- redactle.net
RedactleGuess words to unredact a Wikipedia article and work out its subject.
Utility 6
- regex101.com
regex101Build and debug regular expressions with live matches and an explanation panel.
- ilovepdf.com
iLovePDFMerge, split, compress and convert PDFs without installing anything.
- gchq.github.io
CyberChefChain encode, decode, hash and parse operations on data, all in the browser.
- squoosh.app
SquooshCompress and convert images locally with side-by-side quality comparison.
- deepl.com
DeepLTranslation that reads naturally, with free text and document translation.
- ihatepdf.in
iHatePDFBuilt after its maker was turned down by iLovePDF. Eighteen PDF tools, all in the browser.
Creative 3
- excalidraw.com
ExcalidrawHand-drawn style whiteboard for quick diagrams, collaborative and open source.
- photopea.com
PhotopeaA Photoshop-grade image editor that opens PSD files in a browser tab.
- oskarstalberg.com
TownscaperClick to grow tiny island towns; no goal, just pleasing architecture. Desktop only.
Reference 1
- web.archive.org
Wayback MachineBrowse archived snapshots of almost any web page, going back decades.
Submit a site
Free, no account, does one thing well. We look at every one and add the good ones by hand.
Say something
A note, a request, a complaint. Approved ones scroll across the page above.
The one ad. It keeps the lights on.