If you happen to find yourself in a cold, poorly lit classroom, bored out of your mind and tired of scrolling on your phone, I have some suggestions for thought provoking games to help pass the time. 

To start are the word games. My favorites come from the newspaper website “The New York Times”, while some require a subscription, there are games that are free to play and quite entertaining. For example, both the “Spelling Bee” and “Letter Boxed” require players to spell out as many words as they can using a select amount of letters. They also have a miniature crossword puzzle as well as a matching tile game and a connect the dot game. Another good site for crossword puzzles is “USA Today”. While they only allot three puzzles a week they are a great way to pass time and try to beat your record. Another game good for breaking PR’s is a word search game that gives your 47 words to find within the mixture of letters. The timer at the top makes for a high stakes game that gets the blood flowing to your brain. 

Other games that don’t require an expansive vocabulary are Garden Gnomes, Solitaire, Koalas to the Max, and Taylor 2048. The Garden Gnomes game is a fun activity where you can launch little gnomes into the air and bounce them off of mushrooms and clouds. Solitaire is a mildly frustrating single player card game that requires patience and restraint, but trust me it’s fun. Koalas to the Max is an adorable site where you drag the cursor over circles until they gradually reveal a picture of a Koala. Not only is it satisfying and fun, it’s probably the cutest game on the market.  Taylor 2048 is just like any other 2048 game except better because each level is a different Taylor Swift album. 

Just a reminder, all these games, while very entertaining and fun, should be put off until all homework is done. Even though it can be tempting to peek over to the open tabs of games much more fun than English homework, it’s important to preserve the recreational websites for times when it’s appropriate so that they don’t get banned.