Wordle is a daily puzzle game in which you’ve got six guesses to identify a word. Dordle doubled it, having you guess two words on two boards at the same time. Then Quordle doubled it again, making it four.
Child’s play. I’m here to talk about Octordle, in which your guesses are input into eight games of Wordle simultaneously.
As always, you can play it in your browser for free. There’s a daily puzzle that’s the same for everyone, and a separate mode that lets you play as many times as you like per day.
Dordle and Quordle never clicked for me, but for no particular reason Octordle has. There’s a clearly separate set of strategies necessary versus regular Wordle; mainly that, rather than focusing on any single solve, it encourages you to move between the puzzles to whichever you think you can solve right now. Become too blinkered on a single puzzle and you’ll no longer have enough remaining guesses to get the rest, even if every guess is a winner.
There’s also something pleasing about hitting that share button and copying eight, 13-line grids to your clipboard. Even if you don’t successfully complete a day’s challenge, sharing it feels immediately like bragging. If you don’t want to overwhelm the family WhatsApp however, there’s a neater version that shares how many guesses it took to solve each board. Here’s mine from today, Octordle #29:
2️⃣🕛
9️⃣🕚
8️⃣3️⃣
7️⃣5️⃣
(Since there’s no single-emoji way of representing double digits, it uses clockfaces pointing at 11, 12, and for 13, one.)
At this point, you’re asking yourself where this ends. Yes, someone has already created a Wordle variant with 16 simultaneous puzzles, called Sedecordle. (Why not Sexdecordle? Cowards). I assume someone is working on Duotrigintordle even as I write this.