What’s new
Patch notes across all the games. Newest first.
- New
Mahjong Solitaire: match the tiles
- /mahjong: the classic tile-matching Mahjong Solitaire as Melio's 16th game. 144 ivory tiles stacked in a layered layout; clear them all by matching free pairs. A tile is free when nothing sits on top of it and at least one side is open.
- Tap two matching free tiles to clear the pair. Every board is generated to be solvable, with a Hint when you cannot spot a move and a Shuffle when you are truly stuck.
- No ads, ever, and nothing to install. Your board in progress is saved right in your browser.
- New
Word Search: find the hidden words
- /word-search: the classic word search as Melio's 15th game. A square grid of letters with a word list beside it; find every listed word as a straight line running in any of the eight directions, across, down, or diagonally, forwards or backwards.
- Drag across a line of letters to claim a word, or tap the first and last letters. Each word you find lights up on the board and gets crossed off the list. Pick a theme like Animals, Fruits, Countries, Space, Ocean, or Sports for a fresh puzzle.
- No ads, ever, and nothing to install. Your puzzle in progress is saved right in your browser.
- New
FreeCell: the classic four-cell solitaire
- /freecell: FreeCell as Melio's 14th game, joining Klondike and Spider in the card lineup. Every card is dealt face up across eight columns, so you can see the whole board from the first move. Four open cells give you room to maneuver, and almost every deal is winnable if you plan ahead.
- Tap to play on the same warm deck as the other two: tap a card or an ordered run to pick it up, tap a column, a free cell, or a foundation to drop it. Legal landing spots light up, and Auto sends every card it can straight home when the win is in reach.
- No ads, ever, and nothing to install. Your game in progress is saved right in your browser.
- New
Spider Solitaire: 1, 2, and 4 suit
- /spider: Spider Solitaire as Melio's 13th game, sitting right next to Klondike. Pick one suit for a gentle start, two for a real challenge, or four for the full classic test. Build a column down from King to Ace in one suit and it lifts off the board; clear all eight runs to win.
- Tap to play on the same warm deck as Klondike: tap a card or a run to pick it up, tap a column to drop it, tap the stock to deal the next row across all ten columns. Legal landing spots light up as you go.
- No ads, ever, and nothing to install. Your game in progress is saved right in your browser.
- New
Typing Test: check your words per minute
- /typing: a typing speed test as Melio's 12th game. Type the words as they scroll by and watch your WPM read out live, right next to the human-benchmark Reaction Time test.
- Live words per minute and accuracy as you type, with 15, 30, and 60 second modes. Your personal best is saved right in your browser.
- No ads, ever, and nothing to install. Just start typing.
- New
Streaks for Connections and Mini Crossword
- Connections and the Mini Crossword now keep a daily streak when you are signed in, the same flame you already had on Sudoku and Wordle. Solve today, keep the chain; miss one day and a built-in grace day covers you, miss two and it resets.
- Your Today page now shows the streak for all four of these dailies in one place, not just Sudoku and Wordle.
- Tightened the streak count itself: a single solved day now correctly reads as a 1-day streak (it used to round up to 2). Existing Sudoku and Wordle streaks may tick down by one, they are simply counted right now.
- New
Solitaire: the classic Klondike, free and clean
- /solitaire: Klondike solitaire as Melio's 11th game. The deal you grew up with, draw-1 or draw-3, with a clean warm board that scales down to your phone.
- Tap to play: tap a card or a run to pick it up, tap where it goes to drop it, tap the stock to deal. A card that can go home flies to its foundation on a second tap, and Auto-complete cascades the rest once the win is locked in. Full undo, all the way back to the deal.
- No ads, ever, and nothing to install. Your game in progress and your best run (fewest moves, fastest time) are saved right in your browser.
- Improved
The whole site got buttery: motion, confetti, and a hundred tiny details
- Sweep your cursor across the home page hero and a soft spotlight reveals the games hiding under the paper: sudoku digits, a knight, wordle tiles, a mine flag. On phones the spotlight wanders on its own. The headline now rises out of a soft blur on load, too.
- Every game now throws theme-aware confetti when you win: beat the bot at chess, finish a sudoku, clear a minesweeper board, solve the Connections grid, hit 2048, set a reaction-time record. Real canvas physics, fluttering pieces, your colors in light and dark.
- The hub's game cards perform their game when you hover: Wordle tiles flip, the chess knight hops, minesweeper flags wave, the 2048 tiles pulse mid-merge, the word-bomb fuse burns down.
- Buttons push back when you press them, cards lift when you reach for them, pages fade in as you navigate, result banners spring open, and the light/dark toggle morphs between sun and moon instead of swapping.
- Footer and nav links grew sliding underlines, scrollbars and text carets match the theme, and content pages cascade in instead of popping.
- All of it respects your reduced-motion setting: turn that on and the site goes calm and instant.
- New
Live move grading, match history, and free game review for Chess
- Play the bots and every move is now graded the instant it lands, from brilliant to blunder, with an eval bar beside the board, a running accuracy score, and a one-line tip when you slip ("Mistake. Best was Nxe5."). Don't want a backseat engine? The Live analysis toggle turns it off.
- New: /chess/history. Every finished game, against a bot or a friend, is saved on this device, newest first. Nothing is uploaded; the list lives in your browser.
- Open any saved game for a full review: accuracy scores for both sides, judgment counts, a clickable evaluation graph, key moments, and the engine's preferred move drawn as an arrow on the board. Step through with the arrow keys.
- 1v1 games stay engine-free while they're live (no fair being graded mid-game), then land in history for the same full review once they end.
- Other chess sites sell this as a premium feature. Melio's version is free, instant, and runs entirely on your device.
- Improved
Chess feels alive: sliding pieces and a learn-the-moves tutorial
- Pieces now physically slide between squares instead of teleporting, captured pieces fade out under the arriving piece, castling animates the king and rook together, and a king in check pulses red. (All of it respects your reduced-motion setting.)
- Bots no longer answer instantly. Each reply lands after a natural one-to-two-second think, so games feel like an opponent rather than a vending machine. The Hard bot's real calculations overlap the pause, never stack on it.
- New on /chess: Learn the moves, an interactive tutorial where each piece demonstrates itself on a real board, on loop. Tap the board any time to take over and try the moves yourself, including castling and a back-rank checkmate.
- Fixed the board's square colors, which were inverted (a1 is a dark square, as any chess player will tell you).
- New
Chess: bots, 1v1 invite links, and a puzzle trainer
- /chess: full chess as Melio's 10th game. Tap a piece, tap a square; every rule enforced including castling, en passant, promotion, threefold repetition, and the fifty-move rule.
- Three bot levels with real personality differences: Easy sees one move ahead and blunders like a beginner, Medium punishes free pieces, Hard calculates several moves deep (its search runs in a Web Worker so the board never freezes).
- 1v1 with a friend, sudoku-style: create a game, send the invite link or 6-letter code, they join from any device without an account, and moves sync live. Every move is validated on the server, so nobody can cheat a position in.
- /chess/puzzles: a tactics trainer with mate-in-1, mate-in-2, and win-material tiers. Every puzzle is machine-verified to have a unique correct first move; streaks and first-try accuracy are tracked.
- Hand-drawn Melio piece set on a warm two-tone board, audio cues for moves, captures, and checks, share cards for bot results, and per-level lifetime records.
- Also: the Blog now has a spot in the top nav bar on every game page, so it's no longer footer-only.
- New
8 more blog guides: sleep, memory, immunity, and more
- Eight new visual guides on /blog, the most-searched how-does-this-work questions we hadn't covered yet: How Sleep Works, How Memory Works, How Your Immune System Works, How Credit Scores Work, How Wi-Fi Works, How Search Engines Work, How the Sun Works, and How Sound Works.
- Same house style as the rest of the blog: a picture for every idea, plain language, fact-checked, no fluff. The blog is now up to 28 guides across Technology, Science, Money, Health, and Math.
- New
The Melio Blog: 20 visual guides to how things work
- /blog is live with twenty illustrated explainers: how AI works (and how it's built, from sand to data centers), money, rockets, cryptography, GPS, evolution, DNA, black holes, airplanes, batteries, nuclear energy, plate tectonics, the water cycle, probability, the stock market, clinical trials, your eyes, your gut, and climate.
- Each guide is individually art-directed with its own palette and typography, reads in about ten minutes, and puts a picture next to every idea. No fluff, no jargon walls.
- Grouped by topic on the index (Technology, Science, Money, Health, Math) so you can binge a lane or hop around.
- Fixed
Minesweeper share links show the right time now
- Minesweeper share links were encoding the clear time in milliseconds where the share page expects seconds, so clears over ~86 seconds produced a broken link, and faster ones displayed a wildly wrong time (a 42s clear shared as 700:00). Times now share correctly.
- New
Sudoku reference triple: glossary + techniques ladder + 2 new guides
- /sudoku/glossary: every sudoku term, defined. Bivalue, hidden pair, X-wing, fish, peers, units, strong links, unique rectangle. Tagged by category, alphabetical, deep-linked from the rules and tools sections.
- /sudoku/techniques: the learning ladder. Every solving technique organized by skill tier (Foundations / Intermediate / Advanced / Expert+) with the difficulty band each one first matters at, and a link to the deeper guide. Answers "what should I learn next?"
- Three new sudoku guides: naked pairs + triples (the most-used intermediate technique after pointing pairs, including hidden-pair siblings), unique rectangle (the uniqueness-based elimination, Type 1 and Type 2 worked out), and XYZ-wing (Y-wing's trivalue-pivot variant). 30 guides total now.
- Audio cues extended to Word Hunt and Word Bomb. Word Hunt's word-found cue actually pitch-shifts up for longer words, so a 7-letter feels different from a 3-letter. Word Bomb gets correct / life-lost / game-over cues. Toggleable in /sudoku/settings, default off.
- Every /guides article now ends with an auto-rotated 'Keep reading' rail of 3-4 related guides, prioritizing same-game siblings. Driven by the registry so new guides automatically show up across the network.
- The hub at / now surfaces 3 strategy guides above-the-fold (Sudoku for beginners + Wordle starting words + How to play Connections) so cold visitors discover /guides without having to find the footer.
- New
Sudoku scanning practice + Connections/Crossword audio + 2 more guides
- /sudoku/practice: endless naked-singles drill with streak + accuracy tracking. Was on the Considering roadmap; now Shipped. Each round shows an Easy puzzle with one cell that has a unique candidate; click it before getting bored.
- Audio cues now extend to Connections (group-solved chime, mistake buzz, full-puzzle fanfare) and Crossword (solve fanfare). Sudoku + Wordle already had them; settings-toggleable, default off.
- Two more beginner guides: How to play Word Hunt (rules + scoring + four habits) and How to play Reaction Time (rules + honest ranges + what actually moves your number). Every game now has a how-to-play page; 27 guides total.
- New
Monthly calendars, sudoku rules, more themes + guides
- Monthly calendar views for every daily: /wordle/calendar, /connections/calendar, /crossword/calendar, /sudoku/calendar. Each shows three months of past puzzles in a Sunday-first grid with the date + a per-game preview (answer letters for Wordle, color chips for Connections, first across word for Crossword, difficulty chip for Sudoku).
- /sudoku/rules: canonical rules reference page with the three rules, the misconceptions sudoku isn't (math, guessing, brute-forceable), brief history, and an overview of variants.
- Three new guides: How to play 2048, How to play Minesweeper, Sudoku skyscraper technique. 25 guides total.
- Two new board themes: Cosmic (deep space with star dust and a spinning galaxy) and Mint (fresh pastel greens with sway-animated leaf clusters). 14 themes total.
- Audio cues extended to Wordle: gentle pluck on guess submit, win fanfare on solve, descending two-note on loss, error buzz on invalid words. Still off by default.
- Small touches: 'Surprise me' random-game button on the hub games-section header, /wordle and /connections yesterday-tease boxes for visitors hunting yesterday's answer.
- New
Daily-hint disclosures + Connections theme glossary
- Today's Wordle, Connections, and Mini Crossword pages now have collapsed-by-default 'Stuck? Get hints' boxes that progressively reveal the answer. Reveal stages require an extra click each so the disclosure doesn't spoil mid-play visitors.
- Yesterday-tease boxes on /wordle and /connections showing a tease of yesterday's answer with a click to the full per-date archive page.
- Wordle word-list now has letter-frequency analytics: overall ranked bar chart + per-position top letters from the curated answer pool. Useful for opener optimization.
- /connections/themes is a new glossary of every category theme that's ever appeared, grouped by difficulty color. 61 unique themes catalogued so far.
- New
Themes gallery, activity heatmap, audio cues, RSS
- New /sudoku/themes gallery showing all 12 board themes in full-size mocks with their actual animated decorations. Click any to apply right there.
- Profile pages now show a 91-day activity heatmap (GitHub-contribution style) of your daily-sudoku completions. Click any cell to jump to that day's puzzle.
- Optional audio cues: gentle synthesized chimes on cell placement, mistakes, and puzzle solve. Off by default; toggle in /sudoku/settings.
- RSS feed at /feed.xml so you can subscribe to the changelog from any reader.
- Sudoku scoring is now explicitly documented at /guides/melio-sudoku-scoring: the exact base × time × mistake × hint formula with worked examples.
- New
5 new sudoku landing pages + shareable solver URLs
- /sudoku/easy, /medium, /hard, /expert, /extreme: one dedicated landing page per difficulty. Each has substantive content on what that difficulty's like, the techniques it'll require, time expectations, and sequential nav to adjacent difficulties.
- Per-puzzle shareable solver URLs: /sudoku/solver/[encoded-puzzle]. Paste any sudoku into /sudoku/solver and hit Copy share link to send the exact puzzle to a friend.
- Aurora and Sunset board themes added, bringing the total to 12. Aurora drapes animated green/magenta ribbons over a dark sky; Sunset places a setting sun over a horizon with swaying palm silhouettes.
- Three new strategy guides: Sudoku X-wing, Y-wing, pointing pairs. Plus how-to-play-Connections, how-to-play-Wordle, and the scoring explainer; 22 guides total now.
- New /players directory listing recent active profiles; sitemap-emitted so Google can find them.
- Improved
Site-wide polish: header, skeletons, worker, next/image
- Every non-sudoku game route now has a slim header with a Games dropdown: one click to switch from Wordle to Connections to 2048 etc. Closes the biggest UX inconsistency on the site.
- Each game route gets a layout-matching loading skeleton (9×9 grid for sudoku, 6×5 tile grid for Wordle, 4×4 word chips for Connections, etc.) instead of a generic progress bar, so the page now reads as 'content loading' through route transitions.
- Sudoku puzzle generation moved to a Web Worker. Expert/Extreme regen used to block the main thread 200-1500ms on phones, freezing the loading spinner. Spinner now actually animates while the worker computes.
- Avatars switched to next/image with Supabase storage allowlisted; leaderboard pages with 10+ avatars now ship AVIF/WebP instead of raw PNG.
- Five new evergreen /sudoku/easy /medium /hard /expert /extreme landing pages with substantive difficulty profiles and sequential nav.
- New /players directory listing recent active profiles, sitemap-emitted so Google can find them.
- New
Multiplayer sudoku has its own page
- Dedicated /multiplayer-sudoku page that pitches the differentiator properly: race, co-op, and spectator modes with mock-board visuals, four-step how-it-works, an explicit FAQ, and a comparison vs. solo sudoku. VideoGame + FAQPage schema markup so Google's knowledge panel and FAQ-rich snippets pick it up.
- Linked from the sudoku hub, the games hub featured card, the multiplayer guide, the tournament guide, and /about. Anywhere multiplayer was mentioned in passing now funnels into the proper landing page.
- New
Per-day puzzle pages with hints
- Every past day's puzzle now has its own URL: /wordle/2026-05-22, /connections/2026-05-22, /crossword/2026-05-22, /sudoku/daily/2026-05-22. Each shows the puzzle for that date, a progressive hint ladder if you don't want to be spoiled outright, letter/group analysis, and adjacent-day navigation.
- Rolling 90-day window for Wordle/Connections/Crossword; whatever's in the daily_puzzles table for Sudoku.
- Sitemap emits every per-date URL so missed-day searches like 'Wordle answer May 22 2026' have a real page to land on instead of a search results page.
- New
Sudoku past puzzles archive
- Browse the last 30 days of daily sudoku puzzles at /sudoku/past-puzzles. Each entry shows the full grid with givens bold and the solution filled in lighter, plus the difficulty for that day. Sudoku was the last daily without an archive; Wordle, Connections, and Mini Crossword have had theirs for a while.
- Linked from the daily page header so people who miss a day know where to find it.
- Improved
Themed boards come alive
- Every decorated board theme now has subtle motion. Sakura petals drift on staggered speeds, Midnight stars and sparkles twinkle on different phases, Forest pine branches and ferns sway in the wind, Ocean kelp waves with the current and fish drift while jellyfish bob, Coral palm fronds sway and sun rays slowly rotate, Parchment compass rose spins, Lavender butterflies float.
- All animations respect prefers-reduced-motion, so users who've opted out of motion still see the static decorations.
- Three new animated extras: a tiny swallow over the Sakura board, scattered fireflies in the Forest canopy, a third butterfly drifting along Lavender's right edge.
- Improved
Hub: clean 3×3 game grid
- All 9 games now tile in a clean 3×3 on desktop instead of a 5×2 with one lonely tile dangling on the bottom row.
- New
New guide: Word Bomb strategy
- 16th /guides article. The handful of habits that turn a 5-round Word Bomb survivor into a 30-round veteran: the shortest-word reflex, suffix-bank patterns for 3-letter fragments, prefix-first scanning for STR/CON/PRO, and the four mistakes that drain runs (trying to be impressive, hesitating, repeating words, forgetting the fragment can be anywhere).
- Closes with realistic score bands: 10-20 words solid, 20-30 strong run, 30-50 top tier, 50+ wordsmith.
- New
New game: Word Bomb
- Ninth playable game lives at /word-bomb. A 2-4 letter fragment appears (TH, STR, TION, etc.). Type any English word that contains it before the 7-second timer runs out. Three lives. Score = words answered before the bomb went off.
- Validation against the existing Word Hunt dictionary (~5,000 common English words 3-8 letters). Fragments weighted so short easy ones come up more often than rare 4-letter ones.
- Personal best saves locally. Each finish generates a per-result share URL (/word-bomb/share/<score>) with its own OG card, so posting your run to chat expands into a real preview.
- Improved
Streak grace day: one miss allowed
- Miss one day and your sudoku or Wordle streak holds. Miss two days in a row and it resets to zero. Applies to both daily streaks; the longest-streak record uses the same rule.
- The grace resets every time the streak does, so each new streak starts with one full grace day available.
- Most-requested feature from the email inbox. If you've been afraid to skip a day, you can stop being afraid of skipping a day.
- New
Past Mini Crossword puzzles at /crossword/past-puzzles
- Browse the last 30 days of Melio Mini Crossword grids with all letters and clues revealed. Useful if you missed a day or want to study clue patterns.
- Each past date has its own anchor for deep-linking, today's puzzle is omitted (no spoilers), and clue answers are shown in monospace next to each clue text.
- Linked from the main /crossword page. With this, all three daily-text games (Wordle, Connections, Mini Crossword) now have public past-puzzle archives.
- Improved
First-time tutorial covers multiplayer + spectator
- The sudoku walkthrough was a 4-step solo intro (cells, notes, hints, pause). Added two more steps: how Race + Co-op modes work, and how spectator URLs let you stream or watch without taking a player slot.
- Existing users won't see these unless they hit Settings → Replay tutorial. New users get the full 6-step walkthrough on their first visit.
- Improved
Profile gets per-mode breakdown + average mistakes
- /sudoku/profile now shows a per-mode breakdown row: Solo finished, Races finished, Co-op finished. Plus average mistakes across all completed puzzles. Renders below the existing Played / Completed / Finish rate tiles.
- Made it easier to see at a glance whether you're more of a solo grinder or a multiplayer player. "Win rate" header renamed to "Finish rate" since it counts puzzles you completed, not races you won.
- New
New guide: Connections grid archetypes
- 15th /guides article. Every Connections puzzle reuses the same handful of category shapes (literal, ___ + word, hidden word, anagram, homophone, shared property). Naming the shape narrows your guess space from millions to a few dozen.
- Six archetypes covered with examples, how to spot each, the trap to watch for, and an attack-order recipe for any new grid.
- Pairs with the existing purple-group guide. Now the /guides Connections section has both a high-level archetypes overview and a deep-dive on the toughest group color.
- New
Share cards now work on every game
- 2048, Minesweeper, Word Hunt, and Reaction Time joined Wordle, Connections, and Sudoku with per-result rich-share URLs. Finish any game, hit "Copy link," paste into Discord, iMessage, or X, and the preview expands into a real card showing your actual score / time / stats.
- Every game on Melio now shares the same way. No more half the games having pretty link previews and the rest looking like generic site cards.
- Each game's OG image is its own design: 2048 shows the iconic tile colors, Minesweeper shows a mini-board, Word Hunt shows a letter grid, Reaction Time shows the green CLICK panel. Branded with the Melio wordmark across all of them.
- New
Past Connections puzzles at /connections/past-puzzles
- Browse the last 30 days of Melio Connections puzzles with the four solved groups revealed. Useful if you missed a day, or to study category patterns from past grids.
- Today's puzzle isn't listed (no spoilers). Each past date has its own anchor so you can deep-link to a specific day.
- Linked from the main Connections page, sitemap'd for indexing. Note: Melio's Connections rotation is independently authored, not the same as NYT.
- New
New guide: How to host a sudoku tournament with friends
- A practical walkthrough for running a 4-16 player sudoku tournament in one evening. Bracket structure, difficulty calibration, the rematch flow, and using spectator URLs as a casting feed.
- Three formats covered: single-elim semis+final for 4, full bracket for 8, round-robin+playoffs for 16. Plus pitfalls (mismatched skill, mobile vs. desktop, mistake spirals) and a one-page checklist at the end.
- 14th /guides article. Pairs with the existing multiplayer sudoku guide.
- New
Sudoku results share as rich social cards
- Completing a solo or daily sudoku puzzle now gives you a "Copy link" button next to Share. The link encodes your difficulty, score, time, and mistakes so when you paste it into Discord, iMessage, or X, the preview shows your actual result, not just a generic page card.
- Same URL-as-data pattern as the Wordle and Connections share cards. Works for every difficulty from Easy to Extreme.
- New
Connections results share as rich social cards too
- Same idea as the Wordle share cards: when you finish a Connections puzzle, hit "Copy link" and you get a URL that encodes your attempt grid. Paste it into a chat and the link expands into a real preview showing the colored attempts, the date, and whether you got it.
- Every Connections game now generates its own unique URL with its own OG image. Sharing your result actually shows your result.
- New
Wordle results share as rich social cards
- After you finish a Wordle (won or lost), the new "Copy link" button hands you a URL like /wordle/share/2026-05-21/4/00210-22120-... that encodes your colored guess grid. Paste it into Discord, iMessage, or X and the preview expands into a real card showing your actual board state plus the date and your guess count.
- Old emoji-grid plaintext share still works alongside it; some surfaces are emoji-friendly, some prefer link previews. Both available.
- Each unique result generates a unique URL with its own OG image, cached at the edge per combo. No DB, no auth, just URL-as-data.
- Improved
Hub cleanup: one less repeated section
- The hub used to promote sudoku twice (Featured card up top + a standalone "Now playing" section right below it). Trimmed: sudoku is in the games grid like every other game now. Featured still pitches the multiplayer race angle, the grid tile takes you to the sudoku hub.
- Fewer sections to scroll past before you can see all eight games.
- Improved
Stronger neon glow on every favicon
- The browser-tab icons got a real bloom. Previously a faint purple haze; now a proper two-layer glow (saturated outer aura + brighter inner glow) behind each crisp game shape. Reads as branded across pinned tabs and bookmarks instead of as a regular site icon.
- New
Spectator mode: watch races live, cell by cell
- Append ?spectate=1 to any sudoku game URL (or hit "Copy watch link" in the game header) and you get a read-only view that shows every racer's board filling in live as they play. Works for streams, friends watching from the sidelines, or recapping a finished race.
- 1 player gets a full-size board, 2 split side-by-side, 3 or more wrap into a 2-column grid. Each tile shows the player's name, progress %, mistakes, and live cell-by-cell solve.
- Spectator URL works post-race too: open it after the finish and you get a permanent replay view with every player's final board and ranked standings.
- New
Free printable sudoku at /sudoku/print
- Pick a difficulty (Easy through Extreme), generate a fresh puzzle, hit Print. Big cells, monospaced digits, thick box borders, no site chrome on the printed page.
- Solution auto-prints on the next sheet so you can check your work. On screen it sits behind a Show solution toggle.
- New
Sudoku solver tool at /sudoku/solver
- Type any 9×9 puzzle in, hit Solve, get the answer instantly. Runs in your browser, no server round-trip.
- "Check uniqueness" button tells you whether your puzzle has exactly one solution or multiple. Useful for catching missing clues in puzzles you found elsewhere.
- Conflicting digits get a red ring as you type so input errors surface immediately.
- New
Wordle word list + live checker at /wordle/word-list
- Every accepted Melio Wordle word (~950 total), grouped alphabetically. Answer-pool words highlighted in purple; valid-guess-only words in a softer ink.
- Live word-check tool at the top: type a 5-letter word, get instant validation. No submit button.
- Letter-nav strip jumps to any section. Note: Melio's answer pool is independent of NYT, different word lists.
- New
Past Wordle answers at /wordle/past-answers
- The last 60 days of Melio Wordle answers, newest first, with the full date for each. Today's puzzle is not included (no spoilers).
- Each entry has an anchor so you can deep-link to a specific date.
- New
Seven new achievements on the profile page
- 🔥 Extreme solver: solve any Extreme sudoku puzzle.
- ✨ Perfectionist: solve a sudoku with zero mistakes.
- 🏁 First across the line: win your first sudoku race.
- 🤝 Better together: complete a co-op sudoku with a teammate.
- 💎 Five-digit club: earn a 10,000+ score on any difficulty.
- 📚 Two-week wordler: 14-day Wordle streak.
- 🗓️ Two-week solver: 14-day Sudoku daily streak.
- All retroactive: qualifying past games unlock automatically.
- New
Ten new strategy guides at /guides
- Long-form articles covering every game we ship. Sudoku: tips for beginners, how to solve hard sudoku, swordfish and jellyfish patterns. Wordle: best starting words, best second words, hard mode strategy. Plus how to win 2048, mini crossword tips, Word Hunt patterns that always score, Minesweeper number patterns, and how to crack the purple group in Connections.
- Plus a meta piece on building a daily puzzle habit, and the official multiplayer sudoku guide explaining race / co-op / spectator modes.
- All cross-linked so finishing one guide naturally leads to the next.
- New
Comprehensive FAQ at /faq
- 20 of the most-asked Melio questions across seven sections: basics, multiplayer, daily puzzles, accounts and devices, notifications, accessibility, and embeds.
- Linked from the footer on every page.
- New
Public roadmap at /roadmap
- See what's shipped, what's in progress, and what's being considered. Got an idea? There's a contact CTA on the page, feature requests via email push items up the priority list.
- New
Sudoku race: Play again with one click
- When a race ends, the finish banner now has a "Play again →" button. Click it and a fresh race spins up with the same opponents at the same difficulty.
- The other players see a "⚔️ <name> wants a rematch" prompt at the top of their screen. One click takes them straight to the new game.
- Works for race + co-op. No more re-inviting everyone manually between rounds.
- New
Daily-puzzle email + push notifications
- Sign up on /today and get a short morning email with each day's Wordle, Connections, Sudoku, Mini Crossword, and Word Hunt. No account required, just an email.
- Or opt into push notifications instead: one ping at 9am ET when today's puzzles drop. Tap the push to jump straight to the daily dashboard.
- One channel, both, or neither. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe.
- Improved
Sudoku mobile: bigger touch targets, sticky number pad
- Number pad now sticks to the bottom of the viewport on phones, so it's always in thumb reach no matter how far down the page you've scrolled.
- Number buttons got a 52px minimum height (up from ~33px on small phones). Way fewer mis-taps.
- Action buttons (Undo, Erase, Notes, Hint) got more padding too. Desktop layout unchanged.
- Improved
Multiplayer sudoku: compact opponent strip on mobile
- When you race or co-op on a phone, the opponent / teammate progress now sits in a compact strip directly above the board. No more scrolling past the board to see how everyone's doing.
- Race: stacked rows with name, live progress bar, percent or finish time. Co-op: shared team progress bar with teammates listed.
- Improved
New cursive Melio wordmark across the site
- The "Melio" brand name now uses Caveat, a friendly handwritten script. Pairs with Fraunces italic for the "Games" accent. Reads warm and indie instead of corporate.
- Applied everywhere the brand appears: hub topbar, footer, every game's h1, and the Open Graph cards when you share a link.
- Improved
Favicons get a neon-purple glow
- Every game's browser-tab icon now has a soft purple halo. Wordle's tiles, Connections' 2×2 squares, Minesweeper's bomb, etc., all keep their iconic colors but pick up the Melio signature glow.
- Reads as one branded family across pinned tabs and bookmarks.
- Improved
Every game page now has rules, tips, and an FAQ
- Below each game's playable board there's now a How-to-play walkthrough, a Tips & strategy section, and a 5-6 question FAQ. Wordle, Connections, Minesweeper, 2048, Word Hunt, Mini Crossword, and Reaction Time all got the treatment.
- Cross-game "More games on Melio" links at the bottom of each game, so finishing one puzzle leads to another.
- PWA shortcuts expanded too: long-press the installed app icon on Android and every game has a one-tap launcher.
- Fixed
Reaction Time: more accurate measurement
- Times were inflated by about 80-100ms because of how the click was being measured. Everyone looked slower than they actually were.
- Fixed: scores should now match what you'd see on humanbenchmark.com or similar reaction-time tests.
- New
New game: Reaction Time test
- Eighth playable game lives at /reaction. Click to start, wait for the panel to turn green, then click as fast as you can.
- Five rounds per run. Shows your fastest, slowest, and average, plus a quality label (Lightning, Excellent, Very fast, etc.).
- Click too soon while the panel is red? That round resets, the rest of the run is unaffected. Personal best saves locally.
- Improved
Themes everywhere + richer decoration art
- Every game's board now picks up your chosen Melio theme. Wordle, Connections, Minesweeper, 2048, Word Hunt, and Mini Crossword all show the cherry blossoms / stars / kelp / butterflies you've picked. The theme switcher button is now reachable from every game.
- Gameplay colors stay fixed (Wordle's green for correct, 2048's tile colors, Connections' difficulty palette, Minesweeper's number colors). Only the chrome around the board changes.
- Decoration art on Midnight, Forest, Coral, Ocean, Parchment, and Lavender bumped up to match Sakura's density: constellations + shooting star on Midnight, ferns + mushrooms on Forest, palm fronds + hibiscus + seabirds on Coral, jellyfish + kelp forest on Ocean, wax seal + compass rose on Parchment, butterflies + sparkles + vines on Lavender.
- Improved
Big polish drop: Today dashboard, share buttons, color-blind palette
- New /today dashboard: every daily puzzle (Sudoku, Wordle, Connections, Word Hunt, Mini Crossword) in one place, with done-status, streaks, and a play-or-replay button per row.
- Share buttons on every game's end screen. Sudoku, Minesweeper, 2048, and Word Hunt finally have them; Wordle and Connections already did.
- Color-blind palette for Connections (pale-yellow / blue-grey / orange / dark-purple). Toggle under the action row, preference persists.
- Reduced-motion respect: if your OS prefers reduced motion, all our tile flips, shakes, and hover animations back off automatically.
- Improved
Word Hunt: right-click to unselect + order badges
- Right-click a letter (or long-press on mobile) to remove it from your word. Truncates the selection at that letter so the path stays continuous.
- Each selected tile shows a small number badge (1, 2, 3…) so your tap order is obvious.
- Improved
Word Hunt: tap to select, not just drag
- Drag worked but was finicky on phones (finger slips off a tile, lost progress). Now you can also tap each letter one at a time.
- Tap the last selected letter to submit. Tap a non-adjacent cell to start fresh.
- Drag still works. Both modes coexist in one gesture.
- New
Mini Crossword + Word Hunt are live
- Mini Crossword: daily 5×5 puzzle. Each row and each column is a real English word.
- Word Hunt: like the iMessage game. Drag through adjacent letters on a 4×4 grid to spell words. 80 seconds. Score by length.
- Both have a daily that's the same for everyone.
- Improved
Wordle dictionary went from 400 to ~3,500 words
- Popular openers (ADIEU, ARISE, RAISE, STARE, CRATE, IRATE…) used to get rejected as "not in word list." Now they're accepted.
- Answer pool is still a curated ~400 common words, so puzzles stay solvable.
- Added a hard-mode validator (every revealed clue must be reused in the next guess).
- Improved
Race finish: see the match results, not the global leaderboard
- After a sudoku race, you now get a Match Results modal with the full ranked standings, medal, name, finish time, mistakes, and computed score.
- Winner highlighted in green, you in brand purple.
- Fixed
Fixed: sudoku invite link was hitting a 404
- Copy-invite-link generated the wrong URL, leftover from when the site got restructured.
- Now uses the short invite-code form (shorter to share, resolves cleanly).
- Improved
Theme & favicon overhaul
- Per-game favicons in their natural colors: Wordle is the three classic tiles, Connections is a 2×2 of yellow/green/blue/purple, Minesweeper is a black bomb, 2048 is an orange tile.
- All favicons are now transparent so they don't render as boxed-in cards in browser chrome.
- Sakura, Coral, Parchment board themes had mistake colors too close to the user-input color; wrong digits were nearly invisible. Bumped them to saturated alarm-red.
- Replaced the 🔥 emoji streak indicator with a proper multi-layer flame icon.
- New
Five new games
- Wordle: daily 5-letter word, 6 guesses, on-screen + physical keyboard.
- Connections: group 16 words into 4 sets of 4. 16 hand-authored puzzles in rotation.
- Minesweeper: classic Microsoft-style. Beginner / Intermediate / Expert. First click always safe.
- 2048: slide and merge. Arrow keys, WASD, swipe. One-step undo.
- Daily Sudoku: one puzzle a day, same for everyone, difficulty rotates by weekday. Streak tracking.
- Improved
Multiplayer polish
- Co-op chat panel in the multiplayer game room. Ephemeral, in-channel, 280 chars per message.
- Avatar uploads. Shows on header, profile, public profile, friends list.
- Realtime toasts for friend requests, accepted requests, and game invites, with one-click links to the right page.
- New
Sudoku themes + new boards
- Three new board themes: Ocean (kelp + bubbles), Parchment (quill + ink splotch), Lavender (sparkles + vine).
- Improved mobile pause overlay: full-tap dismiss, larger icon, elapsed-time readout.
- First-time tutorial walkthrough on /sudoku, with a Replay button in settings.