The year 2022 is the Wordle Year. In its aftermath, there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of Wordle spinoffs covering everything from geography to music to arithmetic, each with their own social media-friendly green and yellow squares.
Every morning, I wake up, roll over, open Wordle, fiddle about until I get the day's word, then switch over to Worldle and guess a nation, hop over to Heardle so I can guess the day's music, open a new tab to go through Quordle (solving four Wordles simultaneously), and then, of course, hit Wordle (BTS Version). Okay, maybe not the last one.
Typically, at this point, it is 10:30 a.m. These web-based, bite-sized treats have severely hindered my morning productivity.
Have we moved on? Maybe. I became warier of seeing Wordle spinoffs and clones. Some were uncommitted. Others were blatant scams designed to make fast cash. The reality is that the sequels never quite captured the original's brilliance. Wordle seemed fresh and new, like a brilliant light amid a period of relative darkness.
Everyone was playing Wordle because it offered us 15 minutes to ourselves every day. Sure, we wanted to defeat our opponents and demonstrate our Galaxy Brains, and yes, we didn't want to lose our winning streaks, but it was more than that. It temporarily interrupted our never-ending room scrolling with adorable emoji grids. It dominated! It remains the greatest. All hail. I will continue to play it for the next five years.
At least, that was my assumption. Until I stumbled upon Waffle.
Waffle Game is a word game similar to Wordle. It was designed by James Robinson, whose Twitter account describes him as a "creator of stuff." James, you developed this to the highest degree.
Waffle will be immediately recognizable to anybody who has played Wordle (so, like, everyone reading this piece). It consists of both yellow and green squares. It is gratis to play. The results grid may be quickly shared on social media with your friends. The distinction? First of all, the grid is in the form of a waffle, thus the name.
waffle game
