Letterle is Wordle without the ‘word’ bit

Wordle is the flavour of early 2022, a simple daily word puzzle game that has moved into the mainstream and filled twitter with squares. Its success has seen a raft of imitators and spoofs like Sweardle (as well as the odd heartwarming tale), and the ongoing love affair has the best and worst of human behaviour in a nutshell.

But let’s get down to brass tacks: What if Wordle, but no words? Letterle 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).

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.