A New and Challenging Wordle Game for Sudoku-lovers

Another game from the Wordle universe for you to try

I am a lover of Wordle and all Wordle-associated games (with the exception of Antiwordle, Antiwordle you know what you did).

Jokes aside, anyone who has dipped their toes into the Antiwordle pool (a game where you are trying your hardest not to guess the word) will know just how difficult, unsatisfying and frustrating this addition to the Wordle-verse can be. Long story short — this article is not about that.

So many of these Wordle-type games have found their way into my daily routine. I like to work through them in tandem with colleagues, friends, and family and share individual scores with one another (in a hopefully non-obnoxious way, of course).

For those that aren’t familiar, Wordle is a daily word-based game where you are attempting to guess a five-letter word in six guesses or less.

The game will let you know if the word you chose is correct, or if any letters used are correct letters in the right place (by turning green) or correct letters in the wrong place (by turning yellow).

Created by Josh Wardle for his partner who loves word games. Josh Wardle’s Wordle rose in internet notoriety and was eventually purchased by the New York Times for an undisclosed sum.

Since Wordle burst onto the scene numerous daily word and other games have popped up. Many follow the same format as Wordle itself (think — Quordle, Octordle), and some follow similar rules (Factle, Worldle).

However, the newest Wordle-like game that has made its way into my routine is none other than Crosswordle.

Crosswordle was reportedly created by Reddit user ymichael and his wife. It is like if Wordle and sudoku had a baby. It employs many of the same principles as Wordle (yellow, green, and grey tiling), however instead of trying to guess the word of the day players are given the answer and have to work backward.

The difficulty lies in that when you uncover a letter (for example choosing W, T, and E for WATER) the game expects that you will use two of the three letters (W, T, or E) in the solution above. You also aren’t able to use a letter that you already know isn’t there over again (example being A or R). This quickly can eliminate possible word options for the above solutions.

The game is timed, so users can try to beat their previous best scores, and challenging in that there is often more than one answer to a puzzle. This makes this game a really fun one to try with friends and to compare answers after the fact. I find the difficulty varies from day to day, but certainly there are times I am spent puzzling over it for quite a while, having to put it down and come back to it later.

There is always a new daily puzzle, similar to its counterpart Wordle so if you struggle one day, there’s always tomorrow. Daily puzzles on weekdays consist of four rows, whereas on weekends they have six. Additionally, there are three, four, and six row puzzles that are available to play aside from the regular daily game to sharpen your skills.

There is a similar Wordle-ish puzzle game that also goes by the name Crosswordle created by Sean Graham which appears similar to Wordle with a crossword puzzle look. This is one that I haven’t tried out yet but also looks very challenging.

So, are you up for the challenge? Have you tried Crosswordle? Do you have other Wordle-adjacent games you like to play? I’d love to hear it. As a lover of words, and of games I’m always on the lookout for the next one to try.