Jack Tame: Better games than Wordle are Worldle and Tradle, geography and trade

Wordle? It's not for me, writes Jack Tame. Photo / @MarketingWeekEd, Facebook

OPINION:

I'm always late to digital trends.

I've never recorded a TikTok. I haven't invested in Bitcoin. It was only last year that I finally stopped using an old-school paper-and-pen diary to organise my schedule.

So when at the start of this year the world went crazy for a new digital game, true to form... I didn't.

Three months on, it's now become a bit of a claim to fame. I'm like a baker who's never tried a cronut. A skydiver who's never wanted to give bungy-jumping a crack. We're in April 2022, and I must be the only journalist on the face of the Earth who's never played a single game of Wordle.

Wordle is a simple, accessible, highly addictive online game, where players get six chances to guess the word of the day. The correct answer is always five letters long. When a player guesses a word incorrectly, but some of the letters from the word in their guess feature in the correct answer, Wordle highlights those letters. You're assisted as you play by a vernacular process of elimination.

The beauty is the simplicity. You can now play Wordle in 140 languages. You can play in Armenian, and Western Armenian. You can play Wordle in Basque, Bengali, Māori, Mandarin, or Mauritian Creole. Even Old Norse, if you so please. You can play Wordle in Klingon, sign language, and Esperanto.

In the space of a few months, Wordle might just have challenged soccer as the single-most popular and accessible game in the whole world. And yet, I still haven't played so much as a single round.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Jack, you're so hip. Truly, a free thinker. I love the way you swagger to the beat of your own drum. Forget trends. Forget quizzes. A daily word game is too nerdy for a cool cat like you.

And you're right. Except. I have a confession.

I haven't played Wordle, but I'm addicted to Worldle. You see the difference, right? Wordle/Worldle. Worldle/Wordle. It's even more confusing when you learn that the guy who designed Wordle is called Josh Wardle. Wordle, designed by Wardle and not to be confused with Worldle.

Worldle is a daily quiz game and the concept couldn't be simpler. Basically, you get the geographic outline of a country or territory and players have six guesses to get it right. With each incorrect guess, Worldle lets you know how far away your guess is in kilometres from the correct answer. It's a geographic process of elimination.

Yesterday's outline was kind of circular. There were no straight borders or major geographic features. I guessed Zimbabwe. Way off. Maybe it's an island, I thought. But it definitely isn't volcanic in nature so it can't be too far North? Aruba! Close. Saint Kitts and Nevis? Closer still. What's 170km east of the British Virgin Islands? No cheating allowed...

Boom. Anguilla. Five guesses. Worldle clocked for the day. Take that, losers.

I don't follow trends. So when half of Planet Earth starts its day with Wordle, I start with Worldle.

At least I did. That was... until I was introduced to Tradle. Ah, yes. Tradle. The daily game where you're presented with a country's dozen major exports by percentage. Hmm, I thought. What country exports almost $4 billion of refined petroleum, 3 billion in cars, and has a surprisingly large paper and cardboard export industry.

I don't wanna brag but I got Tradle in two. Finland, of course.

The more I play Tradle and Worldle, the more I think it’s an awfully good thing I got a girlfriend before this trend kicked off. But then, you know me. I’m not one to follow trends. Honestly. You’ll have to take my wordle for it.