Wordle!

This word puzzle game has become a buzzworthy sensation thanks to its mix of haphazard guessing and visual cues, which help you determine the right answer. Kids start out in Wordle! with an essentially random guess, unless they can afford to buy a hint or a dart, which removes incorrect letters from the board, or they can also opt to skip a word. They'll get a few of those options when they start playing, but after they run out, each costs 125 to 200 coins. There's a catch there, because you need to successfully guess words to earn coins -- so for at least awhile, they won't be able to tap into much help. But that's part of the fun. Much like a crossword puzzle, the correct answer can become clear over time as you enter new terms and see what letters are in the word -- and if you're lucky, what order they're in. If you happen to enter a letter in the correct space, the background will turn green. If you guessed a letter that's in the word, but not in the right place, that tile's background will be yellow. Letters that aren't in the word are grayed out.

Drawing on vocabulary and language knowledge can help kids solve puzzles. But the instructions, which kids can view by clicking on an "i" icon, are a little sparse. Ads are unfortunately a pretty big part of the playing experience -- they're shown virtually after you finish each puzzle, and some versions are long and can require you to click out of two screens. In some of the special modes, kids may have to watch an ad before they play. Banner ads also appear on the bottom of the screen periodically, and pop-up windows tout in-app currency purchases kids can -- but don't really need -- to make. But you can pay about $6 to remove the ads -- or, if kids are able to tune out the repeated interruptions between rounds, they may find the Wordle! puzzles offer an interesting enough series of challenges to encourage them to keep playing, even with all the promotion-based pauses.