February 21, 2023
Wordle was fun for while, but being a little bit complicit is kind of like being a little bit pregnant except the thing I’d be bringing into the world is a future I don’t want. So that’s the end of that.
I aired this out over on Mastodon, and because Mastodon is still the good internet, Mastodon delivered. Here’s a collection of generally word-based, short-play minigames, simple joys that remain undiluted. I’ve culled out the straight up clones in favor of things that bring something new to the table.
- Merriam-Webster’s Quordle.
- Octordle.
- Sedecordle.
- Duotrigordle.
- Worldle – name the country from its shape.
- Statele – same but for American states.
- Countryle – ?
- Globle – Guess the country, shape plus proximity hints.
- Absurdle – Adversarial Wordle, basically a Wordle you need to force to say uncle.
- Semantle. Proximity of meaning, very interesting.
- Dordle. This one was suggested a lot.
- HelloWordl – interesting, a flexible width version?
- Redactle. Identify a text that’s been heavily redacted. Very cool.
- Phoodle – food themed.
- Tridle – guess three words at once?
- Scrabwordle – A scrabble twist on the original.
- Squareword – an interesting 2d variant.
- Tradle – Guess the country from its exports.
- Waffle, a grid puzzle.
… and some not-word games, riffing on Guess The Game:
- Framed.wtf – guess the movie,
- Episode.wtf – guess the show,
And finally, if you want to microdose on Clue every morning: murdle.