Screenshot: New York Times
Wordle arguably owed its early popularity to its built-in friendly competition: when you finish a puzzle, you get to paste those little yellow and green squares to social media or send them to a friend. Now, there’s a new way to share how you did and engage in a little playful competition: Wordle Golf.
The New York Times, which owns Wordle, proposed the game this week with a simple ruleset and scorecard. There’s no change to the Wordle game itself, which you can still play here or in the NYT’s Crossword app. (You have six chances to guess a five-letter word. Letters that turn green are correct; letters that turn yellow are present in the word but not in the place you guessed them. Uncolored letters are not in the word. Make your next guess wisely.)
The “golf” aspect comes in when you score yourself. You get bragging rights the fewer guesses it takes you to solve the puzzle, so why not create a formal scoring system around that idea?
How to play Wordle Golf
In Wordle Golf, you play nine puzzles—like nine holes, get it?—and the winner is the person with the lowest score by the end. Today I solved the puzzle in three guesses, so I’ve got a score of 3 so far. If it takes me four guesses tomorrow, I’ll be up to 7. For the full effect, print this card and write your scores on it with a tiny pencil.
If you miss a day, the NYT says, you must mark 7 points for the day. If you run out of guesses, give yourself 6.5. And if you spoil the puzzle for others, add 4 points to your own score. If you’re the one who got the word spoiled mid-puzzle, you can mark down your current number of guesses as your score for the day. Got it? Good luck.
