What is Wordle rival Absurdle and how do you play it?

Wordle has become one of the most popular word games in the world within just a few months, going from 90 players in November 2021 to millions a day. The New York Times word game may have some competition from similar games such as Absurdle.

Wordle is a game where you attempt to guess a five-letter word by typing in different words that turn green if they’re in the right place and yellow if they’re in the word but in the wrong spot. The simple word game has become popular due to the sense of community it has created, with everyone guessing the same word every day.

But Absurdle takes that concept and turns it into chaos.

What is Absurdle?

While Wordle only has one correct answer every day, Absurdle’s winning word changes with each guess, meaning nobody’s is the same.

Developers describe it as an “adversarial variant” of Wordle since it’s actively trying to “avoid” giving the answer. Every guess players make reveals “as little information as possible,” with the secret word even changing when possible.

“Absurdle gives the impression of picking a single secret word, but instead what it actually does is consider the entire list of all possible secret words which conform to your guesses so far,” the creators said.

How to play Absurdle

So how do you play Absurdle, a game that is trying to trick you and not give you answers?

Unlike Wordle, you have an unlimited amount of guesses. However, you want to narrow down words quickly by guessing in six words or less if possible. Depending on the word you enter, Absurdle’s internal list of words will grow smaller and smaller, starting at over 2,000 possible words.

Your goal is to force the game to shrink the word pool down to the word you have in mind. You start the game with a blank slate. The first few words you enter will most likely be totally grey, as the system continues to fight against you. The entire time, Absurdle is creating a word pool of probable answers but this is shrunk down as you get closer to the word you’ve pinned.

The best way to narrow down the list of possible words fast is to use two words right at the start that share no similar letters at all. This eliminates all words that contain those grey letters in the first two words.

What is Sweardle?

There are even more Wordle variants out there for people bored of just the New York Times version. Sweardle is a four-letter version of Worlde that’s all about swear words and coarse language. This one isn’t as safe to do at the office but can be a great form of entertainment.