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Hey there, listeners. It’s Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. Before we begin, quick shout out to our listeners, specifically, [JC Chose Me 00:00:11], who wrote a wonderful review on Apple Podcasts. This is what they say. “Brett knows this stuff. Relatable and personable. Love this podcast and the love the fact that it’s short.” Thank you so much, JC. Love your feedback. It is greatly appreciated. And we’ll talk more about how you can share your own thoughts and reviews and stuff on the pod. Well, let’s get to today’s pod. Wordle, because we never talk about it on this podcast at all. Obviously, Wordle’s been a huge hit and a lot’s happened since the buzz around this game first started in January. It’s been acquired by the New York Times. We’ve seen a ton of different spinoffs.
Obviously, with the acquisition by the New York Times, there have been some concerns and worries about, how much is the game going to change? Luckily, for us, there have been a lot of different versions of this game that have popped up and I break a lot down for you. I write about this in a story that you can read on tech.usatoday.com basically looking at 10 spinoffs of Wordle. Now, I know there’s some that we have talked about here already so I’m not going to address those again, because there are episodes about that. So I’m going to focus on the ones that are new that maybe I haven’t talked about here that I think would be fun and I think are worth checking out. The first one is Crosswordle, which it almost broke my brain at first, but it is a really cool concept. Basically, what it does is it takes Wordle and almost turns it into a crossword puzzle.
So the way the puzzle’s set up is you have four rows of five letter guesses or words. The final word is at the very bottom, so it’s all in green, and what you see above it is every row above it has five letter options there, but in each place is a blank square and they have different colors. So say the winning word is “about” at the very bottom, you might see a row that with one green square and one yellow square and a couple that are grayed out to tell you basically this, if it’s a green square, that means it’s in the final word at the bottom and it’s in the same place. So you know that if it begins with an A and that first square is green, then you know they both start with A. Yellow ones, yellow tiles suggest that the letter is in the word, but it’s in the wrong place. So it’s one of those letters in the final word. It’s just not in the right spot. So you have to figure that out.
And it’s really just about figuring out what all the words are in this Crosswordle. It’s really fun. Honestly, the way I’m describing it, it feels really complex, but it’s tricky. But it’s a really cool game and for someone that wants something that’s a little more complex it’s a really great option. Another game to consider is called Absurdle, which is interesting. I describe it as Wordle but mean because the idea is it’s trying very hard to make sure you can’t guess the word. So every time you answer, it tries to tell you as little about it as possible. And there are ways it does this. I’ve tried this game out. Sometimes it will throw you a lot of words with a letter used multiple times. There are so many different ways it goes. But the idea is it’s trying to work really hard to make sure you can’t guess. So it’s a lot harder. It takes a lot longer to figure out what the word is.
Luckily, you get unlimited attempts at the word. So it’s not like you have six guesses and you’re done. You can guess as many times as you want. On the games website, it says the best score you can get is a four. That’s how challenging it is. There is also a hard mode too. So if you’re feeling like Absurdle not that hard or is easier than you thought, then you could give that a shot, but I can’t imagine that’s going to be a problem. And it’s definitely something where you’re going to be just fine. Another really cool game is Word Master and I think of all the games that I’ve played this is one of the closest to the actual Wordle experience. It plays exactly like Wordle. If you’ve played Wordle, then you know how it works. The most important difference though is you can play as many rounds as you want. So, with Wordle, you play once every day and then you’re done. This lets you keep going. So you can just keep going, pick a new puzzle, and keep moving through.
The other thing that’s cool too is you can adjust the difficulty level. So if it feels like the words are too easy, you can go to something harder and it’ll give you some really complex words. But, again, the premise is exactly the same. You can read more about all these different games. If you’re looking for just more Wordle, stuff like that, you can go to tech.usatoday.com for more. Listeners, let’s hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, or show ideas? Any tech problems you want us to try to address? You could find me on Twitter @BrettMolina23. Chandler, I’m starting that from the top. Please don’t forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You’ve been listening to Talking Tech. We’ll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Even more alternatives to Wordle: Talking Tech podcast
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