Bless the Simplicity of Wordle, Which Offers Much and Asks Nothing in Return
Everyone is trying to steal Wordle. There’s Evil Wordle, in which the “evil” part can be turned off so it’s just Wordle. There’s Absurdle, which is like Evil Wordle except without the most infringe-y part. There’s Sweardle, Letterdle (hilarious), Queerdle, Hello Wordl, and then some dude who literally just made a paid app called Wordle since the name wasn’t trademark protected, and then had an embarrassing meltdown when people told him he was being a dick.
Why the thefts, near-thefts, and homages? It’s because Wordle, the word game created by Josh Wardle for his partner that now sees upwards of two million players each day, is so elegant that it’s irresistible. (It’s also, apparently, pretty easy to code.) You probably already know how the game works, but if not, your job is to guess a five-letter word in six tries. Each time you get a letter correct, but in the wrong place, it will show up as yellow, and each time you get the right letter in the right place, it will show up green. Here’s an example from earlier this week, sent to me by a friend:
On the first guess, he nailed the A and R, but in the wrong order. On the second guess, in an attempt to get more vowels, he went with “radio” and got the additional information that the A was the second letter, and the word included an “O.” By guess three, he had correctly deduced that the word was _A_OR, and from there it was just bad luck that he had two very good possibilities to try before correctly answering FAVOR.
You get the gist—like many great games, it’s not complicated. Wordle can be enjoyed and played successfully by anyone, and unlike the crossword puzzle, there’s a huge element of luck at play here, which means that on a given day, with a given guess, anybody can beat anybody. I have a friend who has begun making ridiculous first guesses as a challenge, and two days ago, after starting with “zuzim,” he got “query” in three tries. My first guess was “hoary,” which you think would be great since it gave me the last two letters in their correct spots, but as you see, I got waxed by the zuzim guy:
Despite the luck element, there’s also a satisfying level of skill and strategy involved, and it’s easy to convince yourself you’re a genius after a smart play. In other words, this is a perfectly addictive piece of word game candy.
It has two other things going for it. First, a neat little shareable graphic that you can post on social media without spoiling anything, which is perfect for the attention-seeking divas and braggarts we’ve all become.
Wordle 207 3/6