Game on: ‘Wordle’ spin-offs for every interest (Review)

Grace Pak, Guest Writer|April 6, 2022

Kate Muir

MORE THAN WORDS: If you are one of the millions of people that have enjoyed the word game Wordle, check out the various spin-off puzzles that the game has inspired.

By now, you’ve probably heard of the popular game Wordle. You have six guesses to figure out the daily five-letter word based on color-coded hints. Maybe you’re craving more, bored of it, or maybe words aren’t your thing. Whatever boat you find yourself in, there is a spinoff game for you.  

For those who love Wordle, try taking on an extra challenge. With Dordle, Quordle, and even Sedecordle, you solve two, four, and sixteen puzzles at once, respectively. You get more guesses the more words you are trying to decipher, and each guess must strategically work toward finding all the words.  

Waffle is similar to Wordle with color-coded clues, but instead, all the letters are given to you and you have 15 moves to switch letters around so they spell all six winning words. The letters are arranged in a waffle shape, hence the title.   

There are also many themed spinoffs for different interests.  These include Taylordle for fans of Taylor Swift, Hogwartle for those who love Harry Potter, and Byrdle for choir kids.  With formats similar to Wordle, these games always have an answer matching their theme.   

If English isn’t your thing, maybe you enjoy math or geography more.  In Mathler and Nerdle, you can solve for the daily math equation.  Worldle shows you the outline of a country and gives you the direction and distance your guess is from the mystery country.  Globle is an interactive globe that uses colors to clue you into how close your guess is to the country.  Learnle combines the subjects, asking you to guess the population of a country.   

If you would rather hone your skills in another language, there are Spanish, French, and German versions of Wordle.  They are the same as the standard English version, but all your guesses must be valid words in the respective language.   

Heardle is a music game.  One second of a song is played and you can take a guess at what it is, or skip the guess to reveal more seconds.  You have up to sixteen seconds of the song’s intro to correctly identify it.  Similarly, Framed is for movie lovers.  You start with a shot from a movie, and as you guess the frames go from rather ambiguous to more obvious.  

In light of the Wordle craze, what's your favorite word puzzle?

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Maybe you’re wondering, what would the opposite of Wordle be?  In Antiwordle, you see how long you can go without guessing the daily word.  Once you guess a letter that’s in the word, you must continue using it in your next guesses; and once a letter is in the right position, it has to stay there until you hit the mystery word.  The more guesses you last, the better!  Reversle gives you the starting word from the beginning as well as an empty grid with colors.  Your goal is to fill each row with words that fit the color clues, like doing Wordle backward.   

If you prefer to keep it simple though, you can always go with the Wordle Archive, and play (or replay) all previous Wordles since the game began.   

How many of these games have you tried?  Which is your favorite?  Let us know in the comments!