According to Twitter, my decrepit Facebook feed, and a daily trash-talking text thread shared among my husband, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law, if you love Wordle, you really love Wordle. Like, play it as soon as you wake up, or get the kids off to school, and promptly advertise your results to whomever will listen (and hopefully applaud your wordsmithing prowess) — that kind of love it.
Since the word game, which gives you six chances to guess a 5-letter word, went viral around the New Year, puzzle lovers and word nerds have rejoiced and delighted in process-of-eliminating their way to the solution in as few attempts as possible. And sharing the green, yellow, and grey boxes that tidily graph their attempts and failures. (Some superfans even enjoy “reverse-engineering” other people’s “attempt profiles” (results) to figure out their “guess progression” so they can “have fun problem-solving twice,” according to my husband. Thankfully, he has a separate text thread for that.)
It’s quick and challenging — but not brain-breaking — and simple. The bare-bones, ad-free interface conjures the quiet stillness of a Scrabble board or old school crossword puzzle. The only problem? Wordle only offers one puzzle per day, miffing acolytes who want more frequent opportunities to hone their skills.
Hit up the Wordle Archive to get more than your daily fix
Thankfully, Devang Thakkar, a fourth-year doctoral student in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at Duke University has come up with a solution. Thakkar has designed a“Remembrance of Wordles Past” archive that lets you solve all the previous Wordles. Though an older Wordle you’ve already solved can feel “new” again a few weeks later, this is especially exciting for people who didn’t hop on the bandwagon until after the game went viral. For example, there have been 221 puzzles as of today, and I didn’t start until #210. So many Wordles to uncover!
The archive looks exactly like regular Wordle, with the addition of five buttons at the top: “First,” “Previous,” “Choose,” “Next,” and “Last.” Once you select where you’d like to start, you can cruise through, spending hours solving Wordles to your heart’s content.