Oodles of -Ordles

Sandy

I have a new morning ritual. I wake up, feed the cat, make coffee and settle in for oodles of -ordles to start my day.

It starts with Wordle.

Wordle is a word game created by software engineer Josh Wardle to entertain himself and his girlfriend. Don’t you love those people who take time out from nerdy jobs to write nerdy games? Anyways, he shared his game with his friends who shared it with theirs and then theirs until it became a viral sensation. Millions of people started playing wordle. It got TV famous and millions more started playing. Then The New York Times bought it for millions of dollars.

What is Wordle ?

Wordle is a 5-letter word game played online. Each day a new word is released and players have six tries to guess the word. Guess the right letter in the right position and the word tile turns green. Guess the right letter in the wrong position and the word tile turns yellow. Guess a wrong letter and the keyboard tile turns grey.

Why is it so popular?

For such a simple game, it’s hard to say why it became a sensation. Maybe because it is so simple? For me it’s less than a one-coffee activity. Just enough to spark my brain fugue and jumpstart my day.

One problem. It is a one-coffee activity and I normally have two coffees in the morning.

So, I found the wordle spin-offs.

Wordle spin-offs

Dordle is double Wordle requiring you to solve two puzzles at the same time. The game is a bit harder but it gives you an extra turn with seven instead of six tries.

Quordle is double Dordle with four words to guess in nine tries

Octordle is double Quordle with eight words to guess in thirteen tries.

Is Wordle hard?

Wordle games get easier the more I do it. It helps to have a few magic words to flush out vowels and letter positions. Good starting words are key tools for wordle-fans. The best ones have essential vowels and letters in common configurations.

True to the origins of the game, mathematicians have identified the words most likely to flush out wins. According to this article, the best starting word to win quickly (in less than 4 tries) is SLICE, while the best word to win (in less than 6) is ADEPT.

For me, using the same starting word takes away from the challenge. As I often tell my coffee companion and erstwhile wordle competitor, “the challenge is in the journey, not the destination!”

I always start wordle with the answer to yesterday’s wordle. Unfortunately, I never remember it. As soon as I solve a puzzle, I forget it. Poof! It’s as if I never typed it. Luckily there’s a website that keeps track of yesterday’s wordle. Ain’t the internet wonderful?

There are some idiosyncrasies in the game. Understandable ones, like using American spelling and slang. COLOUR is spelt COLOR (which as a Canadian, I understand) and FOREGO is spelt FORGO (which even as Canadian, I do not.) There have been questionable words like TWIXT, sneaky words like UNFED and uncommon words like BIOME.

I’ve learned a few new words in this game. Some like TORUS and SYNOD, I can’t imagine ever using in real life. Others, I have to make up an excuse to use. Words like SCHWA which is not only a word but a letter too. Plus, it’s a fun word to say.

Do you play wordle or any of its variants? Maybe you’re a Absurdle fan ? What’s your favorite starter word?

29 Comments

      1. I hear you … it’s fun trying our new games because one never knows. Older Child introduced us to a table top card game called Splendour and I didn’t think I would like it at first glance – but we are all hooked now!

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    2. … I wanted to share couple videos I found while researching SCHWA.

      It’s very cheeky of you Aussies to claim the SCHWA sound

      but according to this educational vid, Aussies like to shorten words, so eliminating vowels all together makes sense, yeah?

      btw .. I had no idea what the guy is saying here https://youtu.be/yDb_WsAt_Z0?t=143

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  6. Hi, Sandy – My husband and I play Wordle together each morning over breakfast. He chooses the starting word (a new word each day) and I usually do the rest from there (he gets bored easily). We have drawn the line at World though and haven’t checked out any of the other games. Thanks for the link. For tomorrosw’s game I will suggest that we start with ‘slice’! 😀

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  7. I’m definitely an addict! I’m trying to break the awful habit of staying up until midnight for the new puzzle… I also do the Canadian version called Canuckle. Fun to get your take on the game!

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  8. Wordle is part of your morning ritual – and it’s part of my evening ritual. I also do dordle and quordle, and I was introduced to them all by Manja 🙂 I can’t handle white text on a black background, so that rules out some of the other ones I found! I start it differently each time according to my mood.

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  9. I play the standard Wordle. I have a mini competition going with my sister and we always share our Wordle attempts by text at some point during the morning. I think honours are fairly even up till now! We tried Heardle (a brief snatch of a music intro and you have to guess the artist or song) – I’m not very good at that but my husband is. I think I’ll stick to Wordle!

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    1. I would be patheticly bad with Heardle. Even if I recognised the music, I wouldn’t know the artist or the song. That’s a game which’d make me bananas.

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