Wordle walked so Knotwords could run

Unless you blipped out of existence over the past few months, you know that Wordle completely took over the collective consciousness for a while. Its simplicity and addicting gameplay led to huge success from small beginnings, and it seemed like you couldn't look anywhere without seeing someone raving about the best new word puzzler. Of course, some grew weary of the game's simplistic style after a while, and other variations began to pop up �there's Lewdle, a cheeky NSFW version, Sweardle, one where you get to guess your favorite swear words, and the most creative ventured away from the word game aspect altogether by using music with Heardle or geography with Globle.

After all this time, yet another variation on the word puzzle has emerged, and this is the first one we've seen since Wordle's debut that might dethrone the game that started a phenomenon. I'm talking about the Wordle creator-approved Knotwords, which is a daily word game that's basically a combination of Wordle, crossword puzzles, and position-based math logic puzzles??. If that sounds kind of confusing, let me break it down for you.

The game presents you with a series of knots, which are small, almost Tetris-like se?ctions that fi?t together. Each section has a series of letters associated with it, and those letters can go in any spot in the knot. The idea is to fill out each knot while being able to read the board both up-and-down and side-to-side, meaning each row and column makes a valid English word.

Knotwords also has a hint feature, which gives the player a definition of a word that's somewhere in the puzzle with a three-minute time penalty to the in-game timer. Similar to crossword puzzles you'll find in a newspaper, the puzzles start out easy on Mondays and ramp up in difficulty until you hit the Sunday edition. Ars Technica has a great breakdown of how to solve a Knotwords puzzle if you want to check it ??out in?? more detail.

While playing Knotwords on mobile platforms, players wi??ll have access to a new puzzle every day, as well as a "puzz??lebook" that provides 30 more new puzzles for the month.

There's also the option of buying the full version of the game for $12, which gives players access to an archive of old Knotwords puzzles, including the ones from before the player's purchase of the game??, as well as yet another monthly collection of puzzles. Daily "twist" puzzles are also included in the full version of the game, which switch things up even more with vowel counters on each row and column �a mechanic that feels ?vaguely like sudoku.

Unlike Wordle, you can't play Knotwords in your browser, but the full version is available for purchase on Steam.

The post Move over, Word??le �Knotwords is the new word game craze appeared first on Destructoid.

A whole new way to play an old favorite

Ah, Scrabble. How many boards have been overturned, how many friendships and game nights have been ruined in your name? Plenty, but it's still one of the most well-loved board games of all time, with countless different editions, tournaments, and even a few game shows over the years. Turns out there's even a holiday themed around the word game, aptly named Scrabble Day, which is today, April 13. As part of the festivities, Scopely, Hasbro, and Mattel announced the newest Scrabble project �a new version of the game that you can play right in your web browser, simply called Scrabble.com.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9H-koKOdCM

Scrabble.com launches with PvP (either with a friend or online) and PvE modes, as well as other features like Word Tools, which includes access to the official Scrabble Dictionary and an anagram solver (having a built-in way to cheat feels a bit weird, but hey, it's their website, they can do what they want). An official Scrabble Blog and Scrabble Forum will also be available on the website. Additional modes and features will be added in the future, such as a competitive "Tournament" mode. Scrabble.com is free-to-play in your browser, and players can keep up with the latest news on Scrabble's official social media @ScrabbleGO on most platforms, and they're even on Twitch.

With Wordle being as successful as it is, I am honestly not surprised in the slightest that Scrabble is coming for the browser game space. It was a smart move to lean into Scrabble's unique brand, though, rather than going for another Wordle copy.

While browser games used to be where a huge portion of gamers played online, most of that went away after Flash was shut down at the end of 2020. It's cool to see a resurgence of this kind of online play, especially because it makes games so much more accessible. Scrabble has had massive success as a ??mobile game, as after launch it b??ecame the #1 mobile word game in the world, which honestly isn't surprising to me at all considering how well-loved the brand is.

Here's to hoping that this new website version is a step in a similar? direction, because this has the potential to help usher in a whole new era of browser gaming.

The post An official Scrabble browser g?ame launched today on Scra??bble Day appeared first on Destructoid.

It was only a matter of time

At this point, I would wager to say that Wordle's clones are just as well-known as the game itself. Just about every variation you can think of exists, from guessing swear words to songs to geography �it's all there, but probably not for long. The New York Times' acquisition of Wordle rocked the internet back at the end of January, and fans of the game have been apprehensive at best since then, after bemoaning supposed changes that the New York Times made to the game that have yet to be confirmed. Either way, everyone is kind of on edge, and understandably so. We've been seeing changes slowly rolling in from the journalistic juggernaut, the most recent being that they demanded the shutdown of a popular Wordle offshoot, Wordle Archive, as reported by Ars Technica.

The website was popular among fans of the modern classic of a word game, as it archived previous days' puzzles and allowed players to return to them as much as they wanted. Wordle Archive had been up since the start of January, but it was officially taken down last week. When players logged on to play through some?? old puzzles, they were instead met with a message that read, "Sadly, the New York Times has requested that the Wordle Archive be taken down."

A representative from the New York Times also put out a statement, as they told Ars Technica, "The usag??e was unauthorized, and we were in touch with them. We don't plan to co??mment beyond that."

As much of a bummer as this is, it's entirely within New York Times' rights to do so as the legal owners of Wordle. Copyright law can get a bit fuzzy when it comes down to copycats, but the fact that World Archive used the exact same name as the original game meant that there was n??o room for ambiguity.

The future of other clones, like any using the "-dle" suffix, is unclear, although part of me has to wonder if the New York Times is looking for a way to take those down, too.
_{[Featured Image Source: PC Gamer]}

The post New York Times takes down the popular Wordl??e Archive appeared first on Destructoid.

A few close calls almost broke the chain

When I first heard about Wordle, the free and pure daily word-guessing game from Josh Wardle, I enjoyed it enough to write an article about it on this site. But I thought that would probably be the end of it. I figured it'd come ??and go for a lot of us �that our attention would shift to the next collective time-waster as new players stepped up to see what the fuss was abou??t. The self-sustaining cycle would continue... for a while at least.

While I'm sure that's true for plenty of people, I??'m not one of th??em. I'm ~hooked~.

• Friends, family, loved ones? Still obsessed.
• Tweeters? Still tweeting.
• Villains? Still trying to spoil the fun.

A month after discovering Wordle, I am still very much invested in this nifty little browser-based puzzle game??. Part of that is on the aforementioned support system, whose members can't help but compare and contrast our different word-deducing habits, and part of that is on the scorecard. Every day, the stakes feel a little higher. It's like how your Report Card in elementary school felt like this mystical, earth-shatteringly serious file.

Who's going to be the last one standing in my Wordle group with a streak? Almost certainly not me. But I'm fighting for it.

I can't keep getting away with this

_{This is what happens when intuition and ill-advised wild-card guesses collide.}

I've had three truly close calls so far with last-ditch, exasperated guesses, includi?ng a recent near-botch with "KNOLL." For now, though, I'm somehow hanging in there.

Admittedly, I don't play Wordle on Hard mo?de �the laxer default rules are fine, thanks �and I also don't try ??and min-max it to death. Nothing against the folks who have whittled down a shortlist of the most effective first guesses, of course. It's just not me!

In this laid-back approach, I end up guessing whatever feels right at the moment, often put myself into an avoidable jam, then struggle for an embarrassingly long time to work my way back out. It's not everyone's playstyle, but it suits me; it keeps Wordle fresh.

Where are you at? Is your streak stable, or did you miss a day? What word did you in?

If you've held off until now, or you're just hearing about it, give Wordle a try since it's good, it's free, and it's playable directly in your desktop or mobile browser without ?needing to download an app or create an account or even suffer through ads. I know it's probably getting old to some, but I cherish it. And I hope to keep cherishing it all year long.

The post Is your Wordle streak still going? appeared first on Destructoid.

After spreading on Twitter, this browser-based game is quickly becoming a daily distraction

I have a 100 percent win rate in Wordle, a popular word-deducing game that's been making the rounds. Granted, I've only played it twice so far �and I really took my sweet time weighing possible answers before committing to an?y guesses �but my track record is, so far at least, flawless. I'll cherish this streak, because it's sure to fizzle out soon.

The best part of Wordle is its simplicity �and also its spoiler-free "Hey, try this!" factor. You don't need to download a standalone app to play �it's right in your browser.

Fresh off my holiday break, I saw Destructoid's own puzzle master Darren Nakamura tweet out an odd grid of gray, yellow, and green blocks with a score and the name "Wordle" attached. I couldn't resist looking into whatever this was, and after a few timid attempts of trying to suss out the day's mystery word, I had to admit that, yep, I was invested. I imagine that's how things have snowballed for plenty of you, too. There are a lot of mildly annoying yet intriguing Wordle tweets floating around. Resistance is futile.

Why is Wordle so popular?

The game?? does a fine job of laying out its brainteaser setup the first time you play, so I'll keep this brief: the idea is to guess a specific word, and you've got six tries. If all of your letters are off, they'll turn gray; if they're in the word but you've got their positioning wrong, they'll become yellow; if any letters are spot-on in the right box, they'll go green.

My instinct was to guess jibberish in order to brute-force a fast solution, but t??hat doesn't fly �it has to be a real word. And I feel like, so far anyway (again, I'm a newbie), the difficulty of the words has been well-balanced with the number of chances you get to crack the code. I also like the idea of always making the same first guess each day.

The fact that everyone on the internet is trying to deduce the same word adds an extra bit of excitement, whether you're competing with folks on Twitter or watching your friends or family members try to work through Wordle in the same room with a puzzled look.

As a coward, I refuse to play on Hard Mode, in which "Any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses." After holl?ering at too many well-meaning Game Show Net??work contestants last week (nice white noise for the holidays), it's time to reap what I sow.

Wordle was graciously created by Josh Wardle, and it's very good.

What to do while waiting for the daily Wordle reset

If you're hooked on Wordle like the rest of us and you'd like to solve more than one puzzle a day (or if you're finding them to be too easy), then check out @chordbug's "remake," hello wordl �it's also playable for free, in your browser. In this version, you aren't l??imited to just one daily puzzle (which I personally feel is exciting as is, a??nd adds stakes), and you can also crank up the difficulty with much longer words to try and guess. More options!

The wider world of Wordle is heating up

• Wordle creator plans to kee??p the viral hit ad-free.
• Clones ar?e missing what makes the original Wordle great: its un??ifying power.
• Developer ?of an earlier ‘Wordleâ€?app sees thousands of mistaken downloads.
• My Wordle streak is still going, somehow.

The post Wordle is a free word game that’s just tough enough to be fun appeared first on Destructoid.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can win you a chicken dinner

The battle royale trend may not be over yet, and one of its newest interpretations is a strange pairing that somehow really works. Babble Royale is, if you boil it down, Scrabble meet??s battle royale. It's also got a lot more going on than yo?u might think.

16 players drop into the wild for a war of words, with the victor emerging as the last scribe standing. You stay alive by staying within the circle that's pressing dow??n on the board. And you can eliminate ??players by breaking into their own words.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPjhqovgsoI

Babble Royale is developed by the creators of idle game Universal Paperclips and Hey Robot over at Everybody House Games. And much like the Paperclips, Babble Royale seems primed for eating up your time.

It's hard to forget the era of Words With Friends, and I dig how Babble Royale reimagines the classic word-crafting game with a battle royale twist. The nice part is, while it's in early access, it's also free to play. So if you want to give your word-finding skills a test, you can download it on Steam right now and find out how verbose you truly are.

Babble Royale will be in early access, and over the next few months, Everybody House Games says it will be expanding the experience with new content and features. Right now seems like a good time to get in on the ground floor of this word combat experience. Or at least, receive a sobering reminder of your actual Scrabble skills.

The post Babble Royale tur?ns Scrabble into a heated battle royal??e appeared first on Destructoid.