A World of Wordle

I'm guessing this Wordle craze is going to die down soon and we'll remember the days when it was all anyone could talk about for a month, much like Sudoku. And maybe it'll be even less relevant since it requires a digital platform and can't be played on paper like Sudoku, and you won't see subway riders carting along a paper book of Sudoku puzzles to pass the time during their NYC commutes like I did for Sudoku... and what will be even less memorable are all the crazy amounts of splinter games that have come from it. But, I want to put them all in one place because I'm starting to lose track of them all (and I bet you didn't know about half of these either). 

Well there's the original Wordle, now owned by the New York Times (ugh).

And you can also find the Wordle archive to do past puzzles (although I already went through that whole thing).

Then there's Quordle, where you do four words at once.

And in going to Quordle, I found Dordle, which is apparently two words at once.

My personal favorite (after the original Wordle) is Worldle (did you catch that? WORLDle) and it will humble you on your global geography

Then we take a left turn with Nerdle, which is numbers-based to find the mathematical equation. It's hard, but not as hard as it sounds, since it sticks to basic functions (addition, subtraction, division and multiplication) and sticks to whole numbers and simple computations. 

Things get absurd with Absurdle... the machine changes the word with each guess for maximum difficulty, but you do get unlimited guesses. It's less difficult and more fun than it sounds, and lasts longer than Wordle.

Now we're about to go off the rails.

Semantle is probably a linguist's dream... you're guessing the word based on the semantics and it's similarity value. Player discretion advised (it can be difficult).

Subwaydle is really for the New Yorker, and I like to play because it makes me feel connected to my once-home, but this one, which gives you two destinations in NYC and asks you create the subway route with two transfers (aka three trains) has a lot of room for improvement. Like, tell me which borough and neighborhood I'm starting in (there are subway stops with the same names off different trains in different boroughs... even upper Manhattan has a 103 stop on the Upper West Side (via the 1 train) and Upper East Side (via the 6 train) so stop telling me I'm wrong!) and there are definitely lots of different ways to get from A to B in NYC, but it only has one correct route. So, it's really fun in theory, a little frustrating in practice.

And to top off the whimsical world of what Wordle has spawned... I also play Swiftle... where you have to guess the Taylor Swift song within 1-second increments. (This one also has room for improvement - like maybe a yellow line if your guess is from the correct album at least?? Otherwise there are no hints, just a simple right or wrong, although it does give you more song to hear with each wrong guess.)

I'm sure there are plenty more but this is my line up for when I need a mental break and if you can't waste a collective half hour on these then I can't help you.