The 2026 Puzzle Awards: our shortlist is here (and it's spicy)
Five categories, fourteen nominees, one very heated editorial meeting. Voting opens today and closes when the shouting stops.
Every August the Puzzle Desk locks the door, orders too much takeout, and argues about the year in puzzles until someone cries or concedes. The result is the Puzzle Awards shortlist, and this year's edition produced more slammed laptops than any in memory. The daily-puzzle arms race is the reason: everything has a streak now, everything wants your 9 a.m., and only a few games have earned it.
Below, the nominees. Community voting is open through September 5, winners announced September 12. Campaign for your favorites in the ratings — that's what the stars are for.
🏆 Trivia Game of the Year
🎉 Best Played With Enemies
📺 Best Couch Game Show
🎵 Best Earworm Factory
"Trivia Crack is unopposed at the top of its category because nothing else has ended a group chat that fast."
— the entire editorial desk, in rare agreement
The spiciest fight was Game of the Year. The case for Trivia Crack is consistency: a decade in, still the cleanest head-to-head loop on any phone. The case for CodyCross — this week's Puzzle of the Week — is ambition: nobody else made a crossword feel like a vacation, and its daily puzzle is so sticky that half the desk keeps the CodyCross solutions archive open in the next tab for the days when the ocean world gets personal. Kahoot! rounds out the ballot as the compromise candidate that might just sneak the crown.
An honorable mention for the game-show block: Wheel of Fortune: Show Puzzles earned its nomination on pure nostalgia, and the desk confirms that when a bonus-round phrase refuses to fall, there is a full Wheel of Fortune puzzle board archive that settles arguments faster than buying a vowel.
Rate your picks between now and September 5. Every star counts once, geography-wheel grudges notwithstanding.