Wordle came along late last year and became an absolute sensation by simply giving us all something to do for five minutes every morning. But as popular as it is, apart from the social sharing feature, Wordle is a singleplayer puzzle game. You can taunt your friends with how smart you are afterwards, but you play it alone.
That will change in October when the official Wordle board game is released. As CNN reported, The New York Times (which bought the free-to-play Wordle from creator Josh Wardle in January) has partnered with Hasbro to create an analog version of the game you can play with other people and without your phone. It’s Wordle, but you do it the old fashioned way: with pens and friends.
Wordle: The Party Game, which is now available for pre-order and will be released on October 1, might just be the perfect gift for that person you know who you don’t really know anything about but you do know they play Wordle. The Wordle board game is for 2-4 players and works pretty much the same way as the original Wordle does. “Players take turns writing down a 5-letter Secret Word. The others try to guess it in the fewest tries to win,” says Hasbro. Simple.
“Best of all, Wordle: The Party Game can be played more than once a day—the included dry-erase Wordle boards and markers mean unlimited play!”
I mean… yeah, I kinda figured there was no restriction on how often you play it, unless the NYT planned to send broad-shouldered goons to your house to rip the game out of your hands after a single round. But I guess it’s good to state it just in case anyone had doubts. There are also a few extra variations on the gameplay, like playing in teams or using a timer, if the vanilla version isn’t spicy enough for your slammin’ “party.”
I sorta feel like you could just play Wordle with friends without paying $20 for the privilege, just by using notepads and a couple pencils. But the game comes with Wordle boards, dry erase markers, and a bunch of little green and yellow tiles to mimic the original game.
Trying to picture in my head how a round would go, I guess people write down their guesses and pass them to the secret word-knower, who then places the colored tiles on top of their answers to indicate which letters are in the right place or the wrong place. And then the players write their good letters on the colored tiles and move them around and formulate their next guess? I dunno. It honestly sounds a little clumsy and slow to me, with a lot of waiting around for people to write guesses and the gussers waiting for their answers to be labeled.
But maybe I’m wrong! Maybe it’s awesome. If you think so, or just want to get some holiday shopping done way early, you can pre-order Wordle: The Party Game from Hasbro. You’ll also be able to find it at stores like Target and Walmart when it’s out in October.
