Wordle is the flavour of early 2022, a simple daily word puzzle game that has moved into the mainstream (opens in new tab) and filled twitter with squares. Its success has seen a raft of imitators and spoofs like Sweardle (opens in new tab) (as well as the odd heartwarming tale (opens in new tab)), and the ongoing love affair has the best and worst (opens in new tab) of human behaviour in a nutshell.
But let's get down to brass tacks: What if Wordle, but no words? Letterle (opens in new tab) is a charming and daft take on the phenomenon which reduces it down to its constituent element: Guessing.
Each day, Letterle chooses a new letter. Each day, you can have up to 26 attempts to guess it. Yes it's absolutely absurd. But also, I got today's Letterle in 8 attempts and that somehow feels like an affirmation of slight latent psychic abilities (If calling Wordle a guessing game annoys you, fair enough, and here's actual strategies from people who think about it much more than I do).
The fact that Letterle somehow has returning users makes me feel like I've done some sort of low level psychological crime https://t.co/TvFjPepFKZJanuary 24, 2022
Ed Jefferson created Letterle, and as you can see above feels the appropriate guilt. It's one of many fun projects he's got up to over the years: I particularly recommend How Patriotic Are You (UK Edition). I am 6.4 patriots out of 10.
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