i'm still thinking about Wordle
how about you?
Hey all,
Since my last piece about Wordle, the game has continued to grow in popularity.
Not only was it acquired by the New York Times (as predicted by yours truly in my last piece), but the game has spawned more variants than the TI-84 graphing calculator1.
I first noticed versions that allowed for 6-13 letter words to be guessed, instead of 5.
Then a friend sent me Lewdle, which is a naughty version of Wordle with the exact same rules, but only selects words of the Carlinian variety for the eventual answer.
There’s Quordle, where you have nine total guesses to guess four 5-letter words simultaneously (in other words, you’re basically playing 4 Wordles at once)
There’s Framed, a cinematic edition where you guess a movie from a series of stills.
There’s Absurdle, which devilishly continues to find words that don’t have the letters you’re suggesting2, and Worldle, where you have six tries to guess a country just by seeing its outline and how far each previous guess is from the correct answer:
You can play Heardle (Wordle meets Name That Tune), or even make your own Custom Wordle, which seems like it would be a hit for the right group chat.
There’s a math equation version called Nerdle, an NFL player version called Weddle (although I personally would have called it “Bortle”), a fast-food menu item version (Chiportle), a Dr. Seuss version (Yertle the Turtle), and I only made two of those up!
Of course, my personal favorite is Poeltl.
Named after current San Antonio Spurs Center Jakob Poeltl (pronounced “PER-dull”)., the answer will always be a current NBA player. Clues about the player’s team, division, position, height, age, and jersey number are revealed with each guess.
There’s also a silhouette feature that shows an outline of the baller d’jour’s headshot, but I personally think having it on makes the game too easy (@Matt and @Donnie).
I’m reminded of those old, “There’s an app for that.” advertisements for the iPhone.
Whatever subject you know an embarrassing amount about… there’s a Wordle for that.
As an anti-Trivia Night and anti-Jeopardy guy, I’m torn.
See, I am worryingly good at Poeltl. But after playing every single edition since the game’s release (and nearly being sucked right back in with its infinitely playable counterpart, the Larry Birdle), I had to retire recently.
To my mind, all iterations of trivia games serve this weird purpose that anyone with an intellectual inferiority complex subconsciously craves.
It’s tangible proof, certifiable evidence, that all those years of listening to Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, or thoughtfully watching AFI’s 100 Greatest Films, or playing so many MyPlayer seasons in 2K8 that by the end of your career, none of your teammates were ever even real players in the NBA3 – was worth it.
That you extrapolated a layered and complex-enough meaning out of what was supposed to be a trivial experience so much so, that one day, you were recognized for retaining so much information. And all of those lazy afternoons re-watching The Office on TBS, or playing a disgusting amount of Madden ’07 finally paid off. And that those kids who bullied you for reading the Harry Potter books in grade school would be quaking in their light-up sneakers if they knew that one day, you would win a “Muggle Mug” for getting 2nd place at your dumpy college bar’s Harry Potter trivia night.
And as the Wordle/Squirtle/Kareem Abdul-Jabbordle creators gleefully watch their DAU/MAU ratio continue to climb closer to 1, their users’ obsession with letting their peers know they still have a fully-functioning hippocampus is preventing them from ever taking a moment to wonder if maybe, just maybe, they are completely wasting their utterly nonrefundable currency that is their time on this Earth.
Or who knows. Maybe I’m just salty that my 42-day Poeltl streak came to an end today because I forgot that Jalen Johnson was on the Hawks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What do you think, dear reader? Are you still playing any of the various -ordles? Which ones??
Am I entirely overthinking this trend?? Should I get in on the action and make, “Zuckle”???
Shoot me a reply email, or leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
“the novel coronavirus” was too low-hanging fruit of a comparison
This same programmer made a game called “Hatetris”, a Tetris variant that continues feeding you the mathematically worst Tetris piece - my personal high score is…2. My friend Jake, once a top 15 ranked Tetris player on Facebook, managed to get a score of 5.
For what it’s worth, my 2K8 teammate Jason Howard on the 2009-23 Sacramento Kings was an absolute bucket in the low post.
have you seen the list of all the spinoffs at https://wordle.today ??