Reunion Is A Great Post-Car Crash Game

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There’s an odd stability to daily games. No matter what tomorrow holds, a comfort exists in knowing you can whip out your phone, or boot up your gaming device of choice, and spend a few minutes twiddling with something new in a familiar setting. This daily structure isn’t always benign—many games use it to create a fairly pointless friction that’s more interested in breaking your will so you’ll spend money to level up faster—but when a game keeps things as simple as “play puzzle, finish puzzle, repeat tomorrow,” it’s a welcomed reprieve.

This is part of what made Merriam-Webster’s Reunion immediately come to mind as my family waited for police in a parking lot after a car crash. Nerves had been shot due to being slammed from behind by a speeding vehicle, blood pressures had risen after watching said vehicle speed off after hitting us, and patience was being tested as we waited for cops to arrive so a report could be filed for insurance. Somewhat miraculously, everyone was physically okay, but a distraction was needed once we realized the cops were taking their time getting to us (we ended up being there for two hours). After my mom’s suggestion of I Spy was met with little enthusiasm, I suggested Merriam-Webster’s daily word puzzle without much thought. That offhanded comment led to much needed fun and a new daily habit for some folks.

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For those who haven’t checked it out, Reunion is a puzzle game where you drag letters to form words and attempt to reunite the two critters on board, a fox and a hedgehog, in as few moves as possible. You’ll know if a letter is in the right place once it’s green, whereas yellow means the letter is in the correct row or column. It makes for an engaging mix of testing your deduction skills and diving into your mental word bank. I’m also fond of the word choice, diverse in its curation but not that difficult. To put it another way, while being an avid reader will help a given player figure out what words can be created, you won’t have to be a spelling bee champion, or ever have participated in one, to have fun and string some letters together.

There are three things in particular that make Reunion great to play after a car crash. First, it’s fairly accessible. Available on mobile or desktop via web browser for free, playing the game is as simple as having a charged phone and access to Wi-fi or cellular data. In a moment that highlighted why mobile games bring in more money than their PC and console counterparts (a fact made clear by the “The Mobile Marketplace in 2025” section of Matthew Ball’s The State of Video Gaming in 2025 presentation), the ubiquity of smartphones lowered any external barrier to entry for my family.

Second, the game is fairly stress-free unless you turn it into an intense competition. Puzzles are not timed, so players can set their own pace. The sole point of comparison to others—being able to see what I assume is the average moves it took people to solve the puzzle—is shown only after you finish the puzzle. Without a timer ticking down or a number to beat staring back at you, the game feels more invested in letting you relax and maybe refresh your vocabulary than anything else. Doing this kind of activity following an emergency is truly relieving, as it not only calms your mind, but also distracts it from thinking about how you and the people you love could’ve had a much, much worse day. I’m very thankful for seatbelts, less thankful for having to use a car to get anywhere in a country that historically builds its infrastructure more around vehicles than people, forcing me to share road space with people who shouldn’t be behind a steering wheel.

The last element of Reunion that was a real godsend post-crash was its archive. While access to the entire game’s catalog isn’t available, anyone can still play weeks worth of the most recent word puzzles. For example, if it’s October 18, you can play every puzzle until September 25. To save you the math, that’s 24 puzzles to pass the time with! Now, this comes with the major caveat that if you’re already locked into doing Reunion daily, the amount of new puzzles to do is dependent on when you started playing. But, for any newcomers, and especially ones that need to kill some time in a parking lot, there’s over 20 more puzzles to play if the first one they tried clicked.

All of these factors came together to create a space buzzing with sliding fingers and “I need to read more” commentary as my family waited to continue our day. It was relaxing and engaging, but most importantly, it was grounding, which was vital for us during an unstable time. For all my love of words, it’s hard to really capture the flood of bad thoughts that pass in the seconds between being suddenly thrown forward in a car seat and seeing everyone is safe. It’s not the first car crash I’ve been in—hell, it’s not even the first one I’ve been in with some of my family—but it’s not like you ever get used to accidents. I can continue my day just fine after one, but I’m incredibly aware of how lucky one has to be to even say that.

I’ve used the word “distraction” to describe Reunion’s role in this whole affair, but it’d be fair to call it focusing as well. Instead of being distracted by a jackass who drove off at “they either stole that car or totally don’t have car insurance” speed, or the negative thoughts begging for attention after a car crash, the word game let me focus on the whole point of that day: hanging out with my family.

Wallace Truesdale is a journalist and critic who loves games and much of what they come into contact with. He’s written for Unwinnable, Stop Caring, PopMatters, and more. You can usually find him blogging at his site Exalclaw, hanging out on Bluesky and Twitch, or devouring some cookies.