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Quordle: Four Wordles in One

quordle.com

369 points by a-bit-of-code · 139 comments (129 loaded)

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DungZeekFu

Hi everyone I am the creator of Quordle and I am glad that people are enjoying playing it :)

I also appreciate all the feedback and I am looking to improve the experience when playing on desktop!

You can follow the @quordle Twitter for updates as well!

  • wil93

    One suggestion: could you put the four games side-by-side when the horizontal space allows it?

    With a 1792px width (Macbook Pro 16) I have to scroll vertically to see all the games while there is plenty of unused horizontal space

    • loudmax

      I agree. If there's empty space on the screen, you shouldn't need to scroll.

      But after a practice round, I didn't need to scroll anyway because I got today's puzzle in 3/4/5/7, so whoohoo!

    • gdfgjhs

      Yeah I came here to say same thing. I find it hard to concentrate when bottom two boards are cutoff.

  • aardshark

    First, loving this version, it's just the right amount of difficulty. It's slowly overtaking Wordle in my group.

    Are the colors in dark mode different to Wordle? I find it harder to remember which gray means unguessed and which means no matches.

    The keyboard doesn't display correctly with split colors on Firefox Android, but the numbers at the end do.

    Lastly, the share is too large. I tend to just cut off the actual boards and just post the numbers.

  • akersten

    It's really cool! one small request: Can you switch the colors for "guessed, not in word" and "not guessed yet" letters on the keyboard? It's opposite from the original and makes it confusing.

    • DungZeekFu

      I am working on tweaking the keyboard to be more clear so stay tuned for updates very soon around this!

      • gulabjamuns

        I am loving this.

        One thing, the position of the backspace and enter keys is the opposite of wordle and that's confusing, esp if you play both.

  • autoexec

    Getting rid of the google tracker would be nice. I was disappointed to see the New York Times added one to the original game after they moved it.

    • fourseventy

      Use adblock?

      • autoexec

        I do, which is how I immediately noticed it was there when I went to the site. I'm just not a big fan of the "I've got mine so screw everyone else" mentality and I'm happy to suggest making simple changes that will improve things for others.

  • falseprofit

    One of today’s words appeared recently. I don’t know how many 5-letter words there are, but I feel like the optimal time between appearances should be a bit longer. (Not to mention this word is an alternative spelling, which may be frustrating to some.)

  • sveno

    This is really neat. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you for building it.

  • Reichhardt

    Need to fully visually eliminate letter choices that are no longer available to the remaining quadrant, when the others that are solved.

  • djrobstep

    Hey my partner plays a lot of quordle and had the following feedback:

    Three things:

    1. Love it! Thank you!

    2. Could there be a better contrast between keyboard letters and the game board? They’re a bit too similar. I use dark mode, but it seems there is the same lack of definition in light mode as well.

    3. Is there any way the whole game could be visible on mobile (e.g. iPhone12 Max) so the last few rows of the game board don’t need to be scrolled?

  • dkonofalski

    If you need CSS help or help with the responsive design, let me know! I'd be happy to help. Switched from Wordle after NYT to Quordle and definitely prefer the challenge of Quordle.

  • cjkarr

    Amazing work. I'll be adding it to my daily routine.

  • TuringNYC

    Which word dictionary did you use? I tried coding my own but was surprised as how messy all the dictionaries are.

  • turkey99

    I like it, but too often there are words that you never use!

  • willis936

    I'm getting some weird words in practice such as "FETID" and "SHALT". Is it reasonable to increase the cutoff of word usage for the dictionary?

  • altairprime

    I love this. Thank you for this.

cableshaft

Of all the variants I've come across so far, I think this one has the most staying power. I think I might prefer it to the original.

I do kind of wish you got one more guess, though, especially if you get stuck, like I did today, having 4 Greens but 5 possibilities for the final letter.

  • brk

    Would be cool to rollover the unused guesses from the solved ones to the remaining ones.

  • treve

    If you sometimes fail, I feel the balance (for you) is right =)

  • sveno

    I could see something like this beating out the original. Wordle has to be 1x/day because there are only a couple thousand common 5-letter words (around 2300, if I recall correctly). It would turn repetitive. This game has O(N^4) combinations, so it can be played over and over.

    • MattRix

      I agree that Quordle is compelling but not sure I see your argument for how Wordle would get repetitive. 2300 is six years worth of words. They could shuffle the word list every 4 years and it’d be fine.

      I think a big part of what makes Wordle compelling is the ritualistic daily nature so not seeing how this would beat it out.

  • yhoneycomb

    I also which it shared it simply as

    Daily Quordle #22

    7⃣ 6⃣

    9⃣ 4⃣

    vs.

    Daily Quordle #23

    7⃣ 6⃣

    9⃣ 4⃣ quordle.com ⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜ ⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

    Maybe you could add a link if you want to expand to the second one. But it's just too long for sharing.

    • DungZeekFu

      That's an interesting idea! It could be cool to have a share link that could rebuild the emoji grid.

      • altairprime

        4 states x 5 letters x 9 guesses is only 180 possible stoplight strings (of green/yellow/gray/black), if I'm doing my math right? So you could just pick 180 emoji and use four of them :)

        • reissbaker

          I thought about this as well, but sadly, last I checked some decently popular apps (Twitter, WhatsApp, some others) don't support emojis in URL paths, only in domain names. So the emoji technique could work for message threads in some apps, but it would look pretty strange in others.

          (I've been helping @DungZeekFu a bit with Quordle and am curious for any ideas around this though!)

          • altairprime

            Well, you need 180 characters, so are there 90 good usable characters, or 60, or 45 that will work?

            I’m not suggesting doing a full UTF mapping onto base64, but just 1..180 mod 3 => char base64[3] would give you 182 board positions in three URL characters.

            • altairprime

              *192, mobile typo, sorry

              • reissbaker

                base64 would be pretty neat! I also wonder what non-emoji unicode characters are commonly supported in paths... If say, CJK character sets were supported by most apps, single-character paths would even work.

          • jjnoakes

            Maybe make it so the emoji are shared without a URL, and anyone can paste the emoji into some place on the site to recreate the grids?

  • philefstat

    I completely agree (on the staying power). This is the only variant that's gripped me as much as the original.

    I built a multiplayer version as a weekend project, would love to know what you think!

    https://wordleague.xyz/

  • cableshaft

    BTW, I should say I have gotten it 2 out of the 3 times I've played it so far, so it's probably enough guesses, just today I really wished there was one more.

  • layer8

    The number of guesses are fine IMO. While I needed one more guess, I also had made an unnecessary guess by mistake.

oliwary

Fun!

I made one with a 5x5 square of letters, containing five words down and five across: https://squareword.org/

A bit like a combination of crosswords and Wordle, as vertical words can be used for additional clues.

  • sand500

    Heh, I got this as a interview question years ago.

    Given a list of words, see if there exists a valid 5x5 square of words.

  • hexciple

    Been playing this one for a while, and I love it. I know it won't always line up this way, but the other day I was able to fill in 4 remaining words with 3 guesses and finished with a score of 8, felt great.

  • aidenn0

    Nice, but seems to use a fairly restrictive word list compared to other games; might make it more attractive to some people as I have friends who say that "ZA" sums up everything wrong with scrabble in one word...

    • oliwary

      Thanks for the feedback! Do you mean in the square itself or the possible guess words? Tried to calibrate the square itself for a good balance between challenge and reasonably common words.

      • aidenn0

        Possible guess words. "unlid" and "mirly" are (possibly over-optimized) good second guesses in wordle.

      • layer8

        Not the GP, but “April” isn’t in the word list.

        • aidenn0

          Many (most?) word games forbid any words that are always capitalized. As either a month or a first name, April is capitalized.

  • te

    I think this (squareword) would be even more fun with a toggle button to transpose the square.

  • tfvlrue

    I've been playing this for a couple weeks now and have really enjoyed it. Well done!

  • guelo

    Nice job!

    One thing, I don't like that plurals are possible answers. The original let you guess plurals but no answers were plurals.

  • NAHWheatCracker

    This is really neat and polished!

  • saurik

    This forces you to type extremely slowly to the point where it feels super awkward :(.

    • oliwary

      Hmm odd! Thanks for the feedback. I think it may be related to the material ripple effect on the keys. Pushed an update now that hopefully fixes it.

  • danparsonson

    Really nice but... surely 'Squardle'? :-)

xmprt

This game is pretty cool but it doesn't play well on desktops because you have to scroll to see all four words. In my opinion it would be better to have all four side by side instead of trying to fit a mobile design for desktop websites.

kodablah

This is getting close to by idea of "Borgle = Boggle + Wordle".

Basically the idea is there is a boggle board generated and all N-letter word paths found. The paths are made available to click on (there are a few UI approaches to this). Once a path is selected you enter Wordle mode for that path. Every guess must still be a real word, but the neat part is if you even nail a single letter, it appears on the Boggle board. And that letter immediately appears as solved on any other path that overlaps it. You can jump/revisit paths at any time.

Goal is to complete the board (unsure if there will be guess limit, letters that are not on any path of course are automatically visible/correct on game start). The completion sharing will be a matrix of numbers instead of colors showing how many guesses of that space across any path were made until the first right letter was achieved. Boggle board size configurable as is the min/max word letters (5x5 w/ only 5-letter words by default).

There are some neat strategies here of path choice/switching and guessing wrong words intentionally in overlapping paths. Will dev if I ever get the time, but feel free to steal the idea and make it.

saurik

Just wait until you try Octordle!

https://octordle.com/

core-utility

This was surprisingly more achievable than I thought it would be, and provides a nice challenge with some strategy.

purplemulberry

I’m loving Quordle and the practice mode. Unfortunately practice mode has ‘stuck’ I can’t clear the board from two days ago. Any suggestions?

VikingCoder

Maybe this takes the fun out of it, but with Quordle, I've had great success with:

TUBES

FLING

CHAMP

WORDY

With those, I've always completed all four...

  • prawn

    I find it quite easy to beat Quordle so the challenge I aim for is trying to get all four words within six guesses. Managed it three times since yesterday. Requires some riskier tactics so it eventually broke my 30+ game streak.

  • gary_chambers

    I see you played the same meta-game that I did. It took me a few tries, but I ended up with: WHISK, FRONT, GLADE, BUMPY.

    Probably not in the spirit of the game, but once you have 20 distinct letters, it is normally quite easy to find the solution.

    • mwigdahl

      Mine are SHIRT, WOMEN, BLACK, PUDGY. I like that order as it hits most of the high-frequency letters up front to enable the odd early snipe.

      • CSMastermind

        Well if we're sharing mine are: SPINE, WORLD, THUMB, and JACKY.

        • bonniemuffin

          Mine are ANGST, PERKY, CHILD and JUMBO. It's interesting how many sets of 4 words with disjoint letters are out there. It took me quite a while to come up with my set, somehow I didn't realize there would be so many other sets that work equally well.

        • Akronymus

          I just start with ANISE and go from there.

  • tshaddox

    I have less fun with that sort of strategy (I like hard mode in Wordle). But in this variant I find it exceedingly difficult if I don't employ this sort of strategy.

calvinmorrison

As many of you I took a jab at a wordle solver. That wasn't so hard.

Then I said, how can I guarantee as a human, I win, in 6 moves almost 100% of the time?

"Quick Brown Fox", as in, use as many possible letters in the alphabet, comprised of 5 letter words, given that we have only 5 words to play with. That gives us 25 characters to use.

I came up with

BLOCK VENTS JUMPY DWARF GHAZI

this leaves out Q and X, which is fine. Using this as a template basically boils Wordle down to a anagram game, so kind of defeats the purpose.

But in this case, i was able to resolve all 4 at one time using my above combination. I guessed, correctly all 4 with PLUMB GLEAN VALID IMPLY. I then realized, you get even more chances on Quordle, but I didn't need it!

  • david_allison

    Doesn't work effectively for Quordle.

    You have 9 guesses. This takes up 5 of them, then you need to be correct for each of the 4 words.

  • DungZeekFu

    True, if you are only shooting to solve it in 9 then it can be easy with the right strategy. But many in our friend group are no longer satisfied with 9 and want 7 or fewer guesses :)

calrueb

Going to echo all the other positive comments. This is the most fun variation I have played. On my first try I failed to complete it, then went and did a practice round with some smarter initial word choices and won (barely!)

legohead

Suggestion: I play and share Dordles via screenshots. I'd like to do the same with this but I don't want to use two screenshots (have to scroll down). Can you have an option to sit these side by side?

jermeh

I like this one quite a bit. I find Wordle fun, but a bit plain sometimes. Quordle really makes me think out of the box to optimize across the grids.

side note: I've gotten most of them, but today's ruined my streak.

  • jetbooster

    I feel like todays words were designed specifically to ruin the day of the 'ROATE' users

    • Packofbezens

      Agree, 'STARE' is my go-to in regular wordle and this one stumped me at first. Still managed a 4/5/7/6 solve :)

Quad4

Played for the first time and eventually got them all but there's nothing that says "solved" or "well done" or let's you share your achievement... What's that about?

willis936

After a few practices to get me out of hard-mode-wordle mode I have found that spending the first 4 guesses on an exhaustive search of letters (picking words with letters in common positions) seems to be universally the best opening. Pursuing individual words before 3 guesses is not optimal.

lupire

Needs work to fit above the fold on small screens. Show fewer rows of guesses, especially early.

przefur

A nice implementation, I really enjoy the practice tab. As many suggested already, it plays poorly on desktops/laptops, I have to scroll to see all four words, would be nice to see horizontally arranged windows.

tobr

Phew, 7/9/4/5. Got the last one with a pretty wild guess at the end. This was the most fun Wordle variation I’ve come across so far, will definitely come back to play tomorrow.

tshaddox

I like this one. I've been playing it a lot the last few days. Is it just me, or is it immensely more difficult than Wordle? I think I only get all 4 correct maybe 25% of the time.

  • prawn

    I find it easier. My Wordle streak is 50+ (no fails yet and only one six). I was sent Quordle yesterday and got a streak of 30+ before I started trying to get the quartet in six lines which is a good challenge.

zto

It would be wonderful if this style of game had the option to render all the letters in lowercase, my brain just seems to treat different case symbols as representing different letters.

SubiculumCode

My favorite variant yet.

not2b

I was so close, solved three and was down to two choices for the fourth (I knew four letters but there were two words and I guessed the wrong one).

I used grep to help with the searching.

gundmc

Neat, but I think the keyboard coloring could use tweaking. It wasn't immediately obvious to me which were unguessed letters and which were guessed but unmatched.

mattcantstop

What I have loved about this iteration of the idea is that I often don't solve the problem. That makes it more fun to me. I like the difficult level.

NextHendrix

I'd like to see a cross between this and Absurdle

AtlasBarfed

This is the best one so far!

This is like when I discovered calcudoku 12x12s and now sudokus are dumb and boring. Just a lot better.

May the NYT acquire you for the level-up option.

theyeenzbeanz

This is a nice refresh and a good challenge, especially after NYT unsurprisingly riddled wordle with trackers.

cbfrench

I spent way too much time playing this this afternoon. Practice mode is dangerous. Thanks, I think. ;)

fullshark

I thought this was a troll game until I played it and enjoyed it thoroughly! Good job.

amptorn

This feels like a cheap ripoff of Dordle: https://zaratustra.itch.io/dordle

If you're going to put your own spin on Wordle, have at it, many others have, but at least demonstrate some creativity.

Vaskerville

Why stop at four?

lindwhi

Can you put this one in the app store?

imglorp

4,6,7,9

throwawaynay

just when I thought we couldn't imagine more wordle variants!nice :D

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