Bored of Wordle? Try these challenging alternatives

Wordle is still taking the world by storm, but while I was very enthusiastic about the word-guessing game a month ago, my interest has since waned. Once I’d figured out a system, it became a lot easier to solve any puzzle in four tries on average. I might have gotten it in three or five at some points, but that’s as suspenseful as the game got. After doing this repeatedly for several weeks, I wanted a different challenge, so I started looking for Wordle alternatives.

Thankfully, I’m not alone in liking the concept of Wordle — one game per day for everyone, web-based with no notifications or ads, and built around a series of guesses and hints. The world is full of people thirsty for this kind of simplicity and of smart developers willing to indulge them. Enter dozens upon dozens of challenging Wordle alternatives. Once you’ve dipped your toes in those, the regular game becomes quite tame.

Related: Wordle acquisition is proof we can’t have nice things anymore

Wordle in other languages

First, there are the language variants. I speak Arabic, French, and English; I also know some Spanish. I discovered Wordle alternatives in all of those languages. Le Mot (French), Wordle ES, (Spanish), AlWird (Arabic) quickly became part of my daily challenge.

And a challenge they were. French likes repeating the same letter two or three times in the same word, Spanish is mind-bending because I’m still learning it, and Arabic… Oh boy, Arabic. Trust me, you don’t want to play Wordle in Arabic. I speak the language natively and I still find it an absolute massacre in word-based games. Vowels are rarely used and every consonant can be pronounced in four different ways (for example, t can be t, ta, too, or tee), so your brain goes on overdrive trying to compose words when you place any letter. Brutal.

Take Wordle and double it, you get Dordle. Double it again, and you get Quordle. Otherwise known as absolute chaos. These games feature two and four puzzles, respectively, that you play at the same time. Whatever guess you use gets applied to all puzzles. That means even solving one puzzle correctly takes out one potential row from the other(s). That’s why Dordle offers seven total guesses instead of six, and Quordle nine. I figured out a system and now I can solve these almost infallibly, but they still make me sweat sometimes.

There are also two reverse-Wordle games where you have to build the grid of guesses based on the colors and final word. Reversle is relatively forgiving, but Crosswordle is madness, honestly. I used to have fun looking at people’s ???? and ???? squares on Twitter and trying to guess how they went about solving the daily riddle, but actually playing that as a game is mind-bending. You start working your way back thinking it’s easy, but oh no no no, it isn’t.

Another challenging Wordle alternative worth pointing out is Hello Wordl. It lets you solve as many Wordle puzzles as you want in a day and it can go up to 11 letters. Around eight letters, my brain starts getting fuzzy. At 10 and 11, I just forget the entire English language. Savage.

Infinite play: The best Word games on Android

Wordle but not words

I’ve always been a big number nerd, so you can imagine that a Wordle-like game with equations instead of words was right up my alley. Nerdle (pictured at the top of the post) is Wordle logic and algebra combined in a package that’s not for the faint of heart. But once again, if you understand the tricks (i.e. where the equal sign is likely to be and how to optimize your first guess to get as much information as possible), it becomes relatively easier. Still, a tough one to crack.

Then there’s Mathler, which gives you the final number and has you guessing how to get to it. It seems simpler than Nerdle because you know what you’re calculating towards, but it’s really just as annoying.

And finally, Worldle takes the general concept of Wordle and applies it to geography. You get the map of a country or territory and you need to guess what it is. No proper ???? and ???? here, but you get hints such as distance and direction. If you’re a geography whizz, this isn’t for you, but if you’re learning your maps or you’ve started forgetting them, it’s a nice challenge.

Nerd out: The best Math games on Android

At this point, I’m not actively pursuing a streak in any of these games. I just hop into one or several of them whenever I feel like distracting myself for a bit, or ignore them for a couple of days. That’s what first drew me to Wordle, and I’m glad that there are dozens of other options now to quench my thirst for more challenging puzzles.