Wordle Craze 😉

Have some fun - and a few alternatives

Jan 14

UPDATE: The game and website Wordle was purchased by the N.Y. Times a couple of weeks after everyone in the world started playing this puzzle word game as a daily diversion from real life for a few minutes.

NY Times says Wordle drove “tens of millions” of new users, record growth

You can still get to the game from the old URL, but it now re-directs to the NY Times domain at: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

If you want to play the original version before the NY Times acquisition you can play it from the Wayback Machine’s archives. That is available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220210031511/https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

The game is still available with an automatic redirect at:

https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

A word game has become an obsessive craze in a couple of weeks online. Good timing. Something to take our minds away from O M I C R O N for a few minutes.

A love story

Josh Wardle who is formerly a software engineer for Reddit created this word game for his partner because his partner loved word games. It’s called Wordle, like his name but one letter different.

It’s been a meteoric rise for the once-a-day game, which invites players to guess a five-letter word in a similar manner as the guess-the-color game Mastermind. After guessing a five-letter word, the game tells you whether any of your letters are in the secret word and whether they are in the correct place. You have six tries to get it right.

And it has caught on like wildfire spreading throughout the internet. On November 1, just ninety people played the game. Today more than 2 million are playing it daily.

The beauty of this site is that it is no-frills and bare bones. There are no login/sign-ins, no ads, no tracking declarations, no popups.

“I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun,” Mr. Wardle said in an interview on Monday. “It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.”

The Rules

It’s fun and addictive. Here are some tips found around the internet that may help solve the puzzle faster:

start with a word with a lot of vowels ( ex: adieu, ouija, audio, beaut, opera)
E, A, O, I are in the top 5 most popular letters in all words

T, N, S, H, R are the most popular consonant letters

Wordle answers allow 2 of the same letters in a word. ‘Llama’ is real tough to guess.

maybe once you have a couple of letters correct, use unique letters for all 5 to get more correct letters
Top 10 most popular letters in order: E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D
arise, ratio, tears, irate, stair, stare, stern, roast, contains most of these top popular letters
stain uses only letters in the top 7

Here is another list of 20 top first words:

REAIS
SLATE
AEGIS
LARES
RALES
TARES
NARES
ARLES
SIREN
RAISE
QUERY
RENTS
SNARE
EARNS
STOAE
SANER
CANOE
TEARS
STEAM
ADIEU

So what are the actual chances of a correct first guess?

“If your strategy is just to guess one of the 12,972 words at random, your chances at getting it right are only 1 in 12,972, which is less than a hundredth of a percent,” explained Aaron Berger, a Ph.D. student in mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and an occasional Wordle player. (…Source)

If you are a cheater, and never want to prosper, there is this: Wordle Solver

If you are a technical computer kind of geek, Ask me where the answer is buried in the code, so you can answer tomorrows Wordle today. Or next weeks even 😫

The following is different than the above chart showing the most frequent “Wordle” answers letter popularity as opposed to the Relative Letter frequency in the English language (from Wiki):

Similar free games:

Canuckle 🇨🇦 Canadian Verison of Wordle

“The answer will be a word/place/Canadianism related to Canada in some way, and a fun fact will be displayed after you play.”

WordPlay: Built with ❤️ by the founder (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharmesh/) of HubSpot. Free forever. https://wordplay.com/

Check your first word grade score: https://wordplay.com/firstword

Check your second word grade score: https://wordplay.com/secondword

Same as Wordle - Wordle 24x7 Play as much as you want. Exactly the same as the original.

Sweardle - 4 letter swear words in 4 plays 🤐

Letterle - have to guess one letter in unlimited tries 🙃

Absurdle - 5 letters with unlimited guesses 😏

Most Like Wordle, Play as Much as you Want:

Hello Wordl - adjustable from 4 to 11 letters in a row with 6 guesses 😁

Instant Nerdle - a Wordle with Numbers

Numble - a Wordle with numbers:

Quordle: Wordle 4 games in 1 is kind of challenging. But that never stopped you, right?:

Dordle - 2 Wordle games at once

MyWordle: Make your own custom wordle like this to send to someone - or just play the game exactly like Wordle.

Worldle- Guess the Country, Learn Geography

Sedecordle: Guess all sixteen sedecordle words in 21 tries. Why not 16 Wordle games at once?

Heardle guess the song in seconds, once a day like Wordle.

Let me know in the comments which game you liked best.

Wordle Alternatives - A Comprehensive List (275 and counting)

Wordle Variants and Spinoffs: 76 Games Like Wordle to Play

My Lazy Wordle Strategy

Wordle, 15 Million Tweets Later

Thanks to the new subscribers!

I’ve been playing Wordle for a couple of weeks now. It has been part of an enjoyable morning routine. What’s your strategy? Are you a vowels first kind of player? I am. What’s your go to first word?

A family affair.