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Wordle freaks, welcome to the soul-crushing awesomeness of Quordle

Nine tries to guess four Wordles at once? You're welcome and I'm sorry.

Screenshot via Quordle

Quordle is like Wordle on steroids.

Yes, yes, I know. Wordle, Wordle, Wordle.

A few years ago, the world was thoroughly Wordle-ized. By now you're either a dedicated daily player or are trying your best to ignore the yellow and green boxes that flood your social media feed each day. As a self-professed word nerd, I'm a fan. Word games are my jam, and Wordle is just challenging enough to be fun without being too taxing. It's a light little exercise to get my brain moving over coffee in the morning and a fun little collective endeavor to share with my fellow humans.

But we couldn't just remain satisfied with our sweet little Wordle game, right? Of course not. Why let a good thing be when we can drive ourselves batty with something else?

Friends, allow me to introduce you to Quordle. You're either going to love me or hate me for this—I'm still not even sure how I feel about myself for being sucked into it. It's awesome and terrible and I can't stop playing.

Quordle, you might guess from the name, means four Wordles. But you're guessing at all of them at the same time with a single word. You get nine tries total to correctly guess all four words.

It's both glorious and torturous. You're welcome. And I'm sorry.

Let me show you what it looks like.

First of all, there are two modes of playing. There's the Daily Quordle, which is the same four words for everyone, one game per day, just like Wordle.

But there's also Practice Quordle, which basically just means you can play as many times as you want. Dangerous.

I'll show you a practice one so I don't spoil anything. Here's what it looks like when you start a practice round:

Screenshot via Quordle

As you can see, there are four "quadrants" where words get entered. The only thing that stinks is that you really can't see all of the rows at once. There are more blank rows for the bottom two words that you have to scroll to see, but it really isn't that big of a deal while you're playing.

Whatever word you enter on each round gets put into all four quadrants. Then, just like in Wordle, the right letters in the wrong places turn yellow and the right letters in the right place turn green. Letters that aren't used remain gray.

Here I am four guesses in (in two different images, since I had to scroll down to see the bottom two quadrants). As you can see, I guessed TONIC correctly for the top right word on the third guess and SLANT for the bottom left word on the fourth guess.

Screenshot via Quordle

And as you can see, the keyboard shows which quadrants contain the letters you've guessed, either in the wrong place (yellow) or the right place (green).

Screenshot via Quordle

The main goal is to get all four words in nine tries or less, but the lower any of the numbers, the better. I did quite well in this particular practice round, getting all four words in six total guesses.

(In fact, this practice round was a bit of redemption after only getting three of the four words in the Daily Quordle today. I had two possible choices for my ninth guess and picked the wrong one. Argh.)

Screenshot via Quordle

Like Wordle, the Quordle interface is super simple; there are no ads or anything extraneous. Also like Wordle, Quordle was created by some guy (his name is Freddie Meyer) who had been playing Dordle (a two-word Wordle challenge) with some friends in January. Another guy in their group, David Mah, came up with Quordle and Meyer perfected it. Now it's got a million players. (Meyer says on the website that he has no plans to monetize Quordle. Maybe he'll end up selling it to The New York Times for seven figures like the Wordle guy did, and if he does? Hey, more power to him.)

This is what humans do, right? Create cool things? Improve and innovate on what came before? Make our brains hurt and drive one another nuts in the best way? Yay, humanity.

So, fellow word nerds, give Quordle a try and see what you think. Again, you're welcome and I'm sorry.

This article originally appeared on 2.17.22

From Your Site Articles

This parody of 'A Whole New World' hilariously summarizes the Wordle sensation

The Holderness Family/Facebook

A Wordle-themed parody of "A Whole New World" nails the word game phenomenon.

Unless you've been living blissfully off the grid the past couple of months, you've undoubtedly seen the world become enamored with Wordle.

Completing the simple word game with a delightfully wholesome origin story has become a daily routine for millions of us who appreciate the collective challenge and the limit of only playing once per day. (I don't actually have stats on how many people play it, but considering the fact that The New York Times paid the creator seven figures for it, I'm assuming it's millions.) We share and compare scores. We whine together when it's hard. We keep the answer secret as part of an entirely new social contract that the game engendered and get annoyed when people think they're sharing a clue that doesn't give it away but actually does give it away.

In an era where so many things divide and polarize us, Wordle has brought people of all walks of life together in a weird and wonderful way.

So while some may be tired of seeing people's Wordle scores on social media, the Wordle sensation is a good thing. And we need more good things.

To sum it all up, the Holderness family created a Wordle-themed parody of Aladdin's "A Whole New World" and it's hilarious. They nailed so many elements of the Wordle phenomenon, from why we play to how we try to convince our loved ones to play to everyone groaning over the word "MOIST." (I have never understood people's issue with that word. It makes me think of chocolate cake. Nothing but yumminess.)

So kick back, relax and enjoy "A Whole New Wordle."

"Let me share my Wordle score with youuuu…" So cute and clever.

To be honest, I'm feeling a bit salty today after experiencing my first Wordle loss this morning. It was bound to happen sometime, but for a person who works with words for a living, the failure hits hard. The fact that this video made me laugh out loud several times is a testament to the Holderness family's ability to entertain. It's healing my wounded Wordle heart. Well done, Penn and Kim.

From Your Site Articles

People are obsessed with the daily word guessing game Wordle—and not just because it's fun

Josh Wardle

Wordle is a simple word game with a sweet origin story.

Look on any app store and you'll see thousands upon thousands of options for games. We've seen waves of popular game obsessions roll through society, from Tetris to Angry Birds to Candy Crush, but there's a new option taking the brain game world by storm.

You won't find it in the app store. You won't see advertisements for it, either. It doesn't even have its own dedicated domain.

It's called Wordle and the premise is simple. Every day, there's a secret 5-letter word to guess and you have six tries to guess it. With each attempt, the game tells you if each letter you typed is a correct letter in the right place (green), a letter that's in the word but in the wrong place (yellow) or a letter that's not in the word at all (gray). You can only play the game once per day. Super simple and satisfyingly challenging.

But its origin story is where Wordle truly shines.

It was created by artist and engineer Josh Wardle ("Wordle" is a play on his last name) and he made it not for cash or clout or commerce, but for love.

Wardle's partner, Palak Shah, enjoys word games, so he decided to make one for her. According to The New York Times, Wordle was a side project for Wardle during the pandemic, and the intent of releasing it publicly is not—nor will it be, according to Wardle—to make money. He just wants people to enjoy it.

"I think people kind of appreciate that there's this thing online that's just fun," Wardle told the Times. "It's not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It's just a game that's fun."

The fact that you can only play it once per day is a refreshing change from games and media that do everything they can to keep your attention and engage for as long as possible.

"I am a bit suspicious of mobile apps that demand your attention and send you push notifications to get more of your attention," Wardle told BBC Radio 4. "I like the idea of doing the opposite of that—what about a game that deliberately doesn't want much of your attention? Wordle is very simple and you can play it in three minutes, and that is all you get."

No ads? No data collection? No algorithms trying to read your mind or push you toward something? Nope, nope and nope.

"I don't understand why something can't just be fun," he told the BBC. "I don't have to charge people money for this and ideally would like to keep it that way."

When you play the game, which you can find here, you get an option at the end to share your results. This is what the share looks like—with no spoilers about the word or any of the letters:

Wordle 200 3/6

Wordle 200 3/6
— Annie Reneau (@Annie Reneau) 1641407266

The grey boxes are letters I typed that aren't in the word, yellow boxes were letters that are in the word but not in the right place, and green letters are correct letters in the correct place. (This was my second day playing, and I was quite thrilled with getting the word in three tries. It took me all six tries yesterday to get the word "SIEGE.")

As someone who loves word games, I find Wordle delightful to play. It's quick and simple, but not easy. The difficulty depends on the word and what you initially guess, of course, but as it's different every day it will never get old. Wardle told the Times that he started with 12,000 words, but narrowed it down to about 2,500 to keep most obscure words that most people wouldn't be able to guess out. The key to a good game is to be challenging enough without feeling impossible, and Wordle fits that bill.

In a time when it feels like everything is complicated and/or profit-driven, having this pure little word game that wants nothing from us but a few minutes of fun is refreshing.

Thank you, Josh Wardle, for offering your sweet gift to us all, especially when we need wholesome simplicity more than ever.

From Your Site Articles

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Wordle freaks, welcome to the soul-crushing awesomeness of Quordle

Nine tries to guess four Wordles at once? You're welcome and I'm sorry.

This parody of 'A Whole New World' hilariously summarizes the Wordle sensation

People are obsessed with the daily word guessing game Wordle—and not just because it's fun

Wordle 200 3/6

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