Simple word game Wordle’s pared down website and once a day play format made it unique in a sea of apps with push notifications and unlimited play. Wordle moved from the developer’s website to the NY Times’ Site over the weekend. As we learned a couple of weeks ago, the popular word game was sold to the NY Times for a “low seven figures.” So far it’s not behind a paywall, but that’s likely happening soon. I still play it every day but it’s lost its sheen now that it’s moved to the NY Times.

People have noticed that the NYT has altered the original Wordle word list to take out some potentially naughty words like “wench” and “slave.” For a time some users could play on both sites. There were different solutions on the original Wordle site and the NY Times, although that seems to have been fixed with a redirect. Also some users lost their Wordle statistics in the move, but now most winning streaks have been ported over to the NY Times. (I wasn’t able to test this as I clear my cookies frequently.)

Enter Quordle, a four quadrant Wordle-type game with nine total guesses for four words. I heard about it through people sharing their scores on Twitter. There’s a daily game on Quordle.com, but unlike Wordle it has practice games you can play as often as you want. I have played it so many times! It’s highly addictive. Apparently there’s also a two word version called Dordle, but I’m just learning about that now. I can’t find a website for that and believe it’s only available as an app.

I’m going to reveal my strategy for both games, which I learned about on Twitter. I use the same three words to start each game. They have no letters in common. The words are “stalk,” “bored” and “fungi.” My kid tells me I’m taking the fun out of it, but I got the tricky Wordle yesterday in four guesses with that strategy.

Also my friend Jasmine told me that, if you use your phone in dark mode, the letter completion colors for Quordle are opposite to Wordle and can be confusing. More that that the delete and enter keys are flipped between the two games. So when you start using Quordle just be aware of the difference if you’re playing on your phone. (Update: You can flip the delete and enter keys on Quordle in the settings.)

I have been using this person's strategy!https://t.co/1m0HDeJMav

— celebitchy (@celebitchy) January 28, 2022

Daily Quordle #23
4️⃣5️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣https://t.co/OQV9qtXFef pic.twitter.com/L4ng7ICw0A

— celebitchy (@celebitchy) February 16, 2022

photos credit: Monstera and Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels