I’m not a huge fan of word games, but I play a lot of puzzle games, based on their old paper equivalents (sometime still published in newspapers and magazines).
My favorite source for these puzzle apps is Conceptis. In addition to web-app games, they also release app-based versions of all these games.
The apps include a few dozen “starter kit” puzzles, and publish a free weekly puzzle every Friday. You can buy additional puzzle packs via fairly inexpensive in-app purchases.
I’ve been playing Conceptis puzzles for nigh-on 25 years or more, ever since GAMES Magazine started printing their puzzles. (GAMES, sadly, is a shell of its former self and no longer worth paying for IMO.) At first, you had to print the puzzles on paper, then somewhere around '08–'09 they developed online solvers, originally in Flash and later recoded into HTML5. (I just double-checked: my oldest online solved puzzles date to late 2008.) The iOS apps were originally developed because iOS didn’t support Flash.
Another source of great puzzles in this vein is the open-source Simon’s Puzzles collection. It includes many that are similar to Conceptis’s non-picture puzzles, and a wide variety of others. You can play them on his web site or in an app. The Mac app stopped development in 2023 but still works, and he’s looking for someone to maintain the Mac front end so that it can be kept updated again. There are also Windows and Unix/Linux apps, and he has links to mobile ports that others have made, including iOS and Android. I have two different iOS ports installed, and each has good and bad points. The best part is that it’s all free.
I’m not smart enough for puzzle games! but I do like word games.
Couple recommendations although it doesn’t fit the topic: Scrabble from The Pixie Pit, $15 USD a year and what I liked is, I believe I read they have license to offer it from the owner of Scrabble, there is a box where you can write a message to your game partner(s), and I don’t think they are scraping info from users. You make your play, add a comment if you want, and partner(s) informed by email with a link to the game. Some family members liked this and it really helped my step mom stay in touch with family while living alone. Sadly, no family members still want to play.
Also I like and still play Word Solitaire, an older version from earlier days of ios, that is no longer on the App Store (some rubbish under the same name is there). I keep older iDevices around to play such games from the ‘more innocent days’.