Worldle is Wordle, except for geography

Wordle has proven so popular that not only has it spawned droves and droves of clones, but The New York Times saw fit to buy it up. It even managed to indirectly foil a naked kidnapper. The little browser-based word game that could has a straightforward format that could feasibly be adapted to a whole range of guesswork/deduction play, though most clones so far opt for smaller variations on the theme (such as this one for rude words). 

But web developer and Twitter user @teuteuf has a more novel approach: Wordle, except for the world. More specifically, Worldle provides an image of a country, the name of which has to be guessed within six attempts. Each incorrect attempt shows the distance in kilometers between your guess and the correct country. If you prefer, you can change the unit of distance to miles.

The image above is today’s Worldle, and I’ve carefully avoided showing the correct answer (unless Turkmenistan was your first guess, in which case, sorry). Each guess needs to be a valid country, and like Wordle, you’re allowed only one game a day, and the answer is the same for everyone. There are difficulty modifiers, too: one randomly rotates the country image, while the other hides the image altogether.

Oh, and your results can easily be copied and pasted too, just like Wordle, so expect to maybe see a tonne of results in your Twitter feed in the coming days or weeks. (Or mute Worldle. Just a suggestion.)

Apparently Worldle managed to attract over 500,000 players on its first day, which is impressive. If you want to give it a spin, here’s the Worldle website to bookmark. Or if you don’t need another thing to be addicted to, steer clear.