The Wordle wormhole
Matilde Martinez-Navarrete, Staff Writer
Anyone keeping up with the latest hot topics knows that Wordle is the internet’s newest sensation. This addictively fun word game challenges users once a day to guess a five-letter word, and has garnered millions of users since it was first released in late 2021.
The game is simple: you have six tries to guess a five-letter word, with gray tiles indicating a letter is not in the word, yellow ones saying the letter is in the word but in the wrong spot and green ones marking a correct letter in the correct spot.
As if their mini crossword puzzle wasn’t addictive enough, the New York Times bought Wordle as a way to gain more viewers and potentially more subscribers. If living in a capitalist society has taught us anything, it’s that Wordle might be locked behind a paywall soon. Thanks, New York Times, for making us live in fear at the thought of our only source of entertainment in the last year being taken away.
A Plan B is now essential. The free app Wordus offers the same experience as Wordle but can be played indefinitely. Another Wordle copy called Wordle Unlimited also lets you play however many games you want, and players can increase the letter-count to 11 if they wish for a challenge. (While these are great alternatives, the people who play these are probably try-hards who want to practice to get better Wordle scores for the “real” daily challenges).
But guessing too many normal words will soon lose the interest of those with a [cough] short attention span. Thankfully, inspired programmers have made newer versions of Wordle to accommodate those with said issue.
A Wordle for Swifties, Taylordle, contains words from Taylor Swift’s songs, life and fandom that all dedicated aficionados will know. Samo is nowhere near short of a Swiftie population, so many are sure to get a kick out of this one.
Lewdle and Sweardle are Wordles for the more dirty-minded. Users try to guess NSFW words in the former, and as the name suggests, swears in the latter, but it’s probably not worth the space to mention these; Samo students are too pure and holy to ever partake in such heinous acts.
For those who think Wordle just isn’t challenging enough, in Absurdle users have to guess a word that is constantly changing. Basically, the game changes the secret word with each guess, revealing as little information as possible. The best possible score is four guesses, but there is no maximum guess count, which is a good thing because Absurdle is the definition of evil.
In Queerdle, the self-proclaimed yassification of Wordle, users guess terms commonly used in or having to do with the LGBTQ+ community. This game is blocked on the school-provided Chromebooks, though. Quite homophobic if you ask me.
Maybe now that students are newly entranced with words, they’ll pay attention in their English classes or pick up a book for a change. Teachers: you might want to consider a (five-letter) vocabulary quiz to keep your students’ attention. Anything for a two-guess Wordle score!
