Websites to Kill Time That Are Actually Worth Your Time

There are two types of time-killing websites: the ones that leave you feeling like you wasted an hour, and the ones that leave you feeling like you spent an hour well. The difference is engagement. Scrolling Reddit for an hour feels empty. Solving a puzzle for an hour feels like you did something. Here are websites that are actually worth your time.

Puzzle and escape room sites

Escape The Website has 30 escape rooms, and each one is a fake website (a restaurant, a bank, a dating app). You read its pages, find the codes hidden in them, and type them into the site's Contact page to escape. Beginner rooms take about 15 minutes and the hardest take over an hour. 5 rooms are free, and 3 of those need no account at all. This is the kind of site where you open one room and suddenly it is 2am.

Try the free tutorial roomAbout 10 minutes, no account needed.

Learning and exploration

• Wikipedia rabbit holes — Pick any article and follow links for 30 minutes. Set a rule: you can only click links within the article text. You will end up somewhere you never expected.
• Coursera / Khan Academy — Free courses on everything from astrophysics to personal finance. More engaging than it sounds once you find a topic that hooks you.

Interactive and creative

• Neal.fun — A collection of interactive experiments. “Spend Bill Gates' Money” and “The Deep Sea” are particularly good.
• Google Earth Timelapse — Watch any location on Earth change over decades. Surprisingly absorbing.

Daily puzzle sites

• NYT Games — Wordle, Connections, Strands, the Mini Crossword. Five minutes each, daily.
• GeoGuessr — Guess where you are from a Street View image. Free tier gives a few rounds per day.

The best time you can waste online

If you have 20 minutes and want something that holds your attention, open Gooooogle (a search engine parody escape room) or SunnySide Restaurant (a diner hiding a staff code across its menu). Both are free, need no account, and are the kind of site you tell someone about afterwards.