In the past few weeks, Wordle, a game in which players have to guess a 5 letter word in 6 tries, has blown up around the world. The game rapidly reached over 200,000 daily players, and was bought by the New York Times for for over a million dollars on January 31st. The game has similarly exploded around Magnet, with seemingly everybody playing the original game, or one of the many variations that have been rapidly popping up everywhere on the internet. In today’s article I will be giving an overview of some of the most popular Wordle variations taking over Magnet, and my personal thoughts on them.

Original Wordle: This is the original game that started the word game trend at Magnet, and most of the time it’s hard to beat the original. I explained the basic premise in the introduction, but simply put you have 6 tries to guess a five letter word. When you guess a letter wrong in a word, the letter turns grey and is not useable in the next guess, and if you guess the letter right it either turns green if the letter was in the right place, or yellow if the letter was in the wrong place. Wordle is still one of my personal favorites, and one of the few games that I consistently play very day. The game stays interesting, as every day varies in difficulty, and you can try out different starting words to try and find the best for you. Finally, it usually does not take too long, so you can do it quickly during class free time, or on a break.

7/10

Dordle/Quordle: I am placing these two together because they are both very similar to each other and the original Wordle game. In Dordle the only difference is that you are now trying to guess two words instead of one, and you now have 7 guesses instead of the original 6 for Wordle. In Quordle, just like how the name sounds, you are now trying to guess 4 words at once, with 9 guesses. I find that the Dordle is slightly more challenging than the original, as you only have one more guess for double the words. Likewise, the Quordle is slightly more challenging than the Dordle due to the now 4 words you have to guess at once. Both of these also have a little more “strategy” to them, as you have to decide your plan of attack and whether you are going to for one word at a time, and then move to the other ones, or focus on all of the words at the same time. Another small thing to note, is that the actual Dordle game is definitely a little better designed aesthetically, than the Quordle game. Overall, I think both of these are improvements over the original game, as the twist of the added words creates a little challenge and keeps it interesting.

8/10

Octurdle: This game is very similar to Dordle and Quordle, in fact they are all linked together on the Octurdle website, but it had to be separated from the others due to a difference in rating. Like you can probably already tell from the name, Octurdle is Wordle with 8 words, and 13 guesses. The problem with Octurdle is that, at least for me, 8 words just became too much and a little too chaotic. While Octurdle, is definitely a lot more challenging, it was not as enjoyable as the previous 3 I have mentioned, due to the insane amount of things happening at once. Additionally having to constantly scroll back and forth on the screen just to see all 8 words is not fun at all.

4/10

Heardle: This game is the first one that is actually very different from the original Wordle, and that is because it involves songs instead of words. In Heardle you have 6 tries to guess a song while only hearing the first 16 seconds. On the first guess you only hear the first second of the song, then on the second guess one second is added to the song, on the third two seconds are added, on the fourth 3 seconds are added, and so on until you reach 16 seconds. Overall I really enjoy this game. It is a nice break from the other word games, and this one is fun to do with friends since you can all listen to the song at once. Additionally, the daily song selection is spot on, as the songs are always pretty popular and recognizable, but come from a wide variety of genres and years.

8/10

Poeltl: This is like Wordle, for NBA and basketball fans, and it is actually named after the San Antonio Spurs Starting center, Jajob Poeltl. In this game you have 6 tries to guess a certain player in the NBA. Instead of having green and yellow letters to help you, you have various facts about them, like their team, their conference, their height, their position, their jersey number, etc. If you get one of these right, but the player wrong, the box will turn green, and if you are only off by one or two, the box will turn yellow. This game has the potential to be extremely fun, and I should love it since I’m a pretty big fan of the NBA, but the main problem with it is that the players can be anybody in the NBA, so sometimes you are guessing some guy who barely plays, and nobody has heard of which can sometimes ruin the entire game for that day.

6/10

Qwordle: While this one looks the same as the four-worded wordle, the Qw actually means quantum in this case. In this game, you have 6 guesses to guess one of two words. The tricky part is knowing which green or yellow letters are in which word, since there are two possible words to guess. This unique twist makes the game much more challenging than most of the other variations, while also still being enjoyable. This is easily one of my favorites, and also one of the few that I consistently play everyday.

8/10

Be sure to try these out and let me know you’re opinions! Also, I’m always looking for more variations, so let me know any new variations or ones I missed!