Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

People are weird.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / I’ve Been Playing Quordle – What Have You Been Up To?

I’ve Been Playing Quordle – What Have You Been Up To?

by | 113 Comments

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BG has been pulled in lots of directions this summer, so a couple of weeks ago I asked if he would like to take the month of August off from Medium Cool as he finishes up his house project and prepares for the new school year.

That got me to thinking… what would I do if I had a month where I were free from even one of my responsibilities?  I have no idea.

My only “fun” the past 4 weeks has been playing Quordle when I took a break from work.  I still like Wordle, but the NYT is pissing me off.   “Here, play this other NYT game!”  “Link your Wordle scores to your NYT account!”  “You are now linked to your NYT account!”  Fuck you.

I knew they would find a way to ruin it, and they did.  Plus, if you forget to play even one day, they set your streak back to zero.  Double fuck them for that.  I’m pretty sure I think “fuck you!” to the NYT at least twice when I play every day.

Quordle is more fun anyway.  Does anyone else play Quorde?  I play the practice games because you get to do more than one a day. I don’t know what I’ll do when I run out of the 100 practice games.  I would pay to play Quordle if I had to.

I made some great cheese enchiladas today with spicy peppers from my garden, and then made some white peach-lemon-cherry popsicles,  I’ll find out tomorrow if they are any good.  My last batch was nectarine-lemon, and those were awesome.  I just make stuff up popsicle-wise, so it’s always a surprise.

Totally open thread.

Reader Interactions

113Comments

  1. 1.

    justawriter

    Got some patty pan squash at the farmers market so I got a store bought eggplant and made ratatouille.

  5. 5.

    daize

    Love Quordle, too!  I never tried the practice games, so thank you for the suggestion!

    I confess I do love the NYT Spelling Bee game.  I’ve subscribed to NYT games only for years (crossword) so I can play Spelling Bee through to the end.  It has some “crossword-ese” but it’s still fun.

  6. 6.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’ve been playing the big ones–Octordle, Sedecordle, 32ordle and occasionally 64ordle. I’ve been in argument with a friend about this–I think Octordle is the hardest of the multi-Wordle variants and it actually becomes an easier game from there on up–start with three starting words that cover the most commonly used half of the alphabet, then after that you can usually guess a word correctly on every line, and it’s just a matter of playing as close to perfect as you can.

  7. 7.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    Worldle is fun – they show a silhouette of a country (or sometimes a territory) and you have to guess what it is. With each answer, they tell you how far away you are (you can set it to miles or kilometers) and an arrow pointing in the general geographic direction of the correct answer. I’m pretty chuffed with how often I get it right on the first try, being a map nerd and all.

  8. 8.

    oldgold

    “What would I do if I had a month where I were free from even one of my responsibilities?“

    I would take up gardening.

  12. 12.

    James E Powell

    I’m pretty sure I think “fuck you!” to the NYT at least twice when I play every day.

    Games or no games, I do that every day.

  13. 13.

    lowtechcyclist

    Spent this weekend cleaning out the shed for the first time in about three years. I usually do it when the weather starts turning in September, but it felt like September here in Maryland, and due to various health issues, I hadn’t tackled it the previous two Septembers.

    So I’ve cleaned it out, nailed new wood over the hole where mice were getting in, set aside a pile of stuff under the deck to give away if possible, or call the town for a special trash pickup if not. The shed had acquired a bit of a fetid smell to it, and now it smells OK. I really need to replace the floor boards, but it won’t be this fall. But there’s less stuff in the shed now, so it’ll be easier to do that next year if I get around to it then.

    That may not have been ‘fun’ in the standard sense, but having done it makes me feel a lot better.

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    I am definitely not a joiner for games and puzzles. When I play a word game, my go-to is SpellMania, an app from the App Store. It has a tiny little ad at the bottom so there are no in-app purchase offers annoying you and you can turn off the sound so it’s just you and the puzzle, no noise or bright explosions.  I’ve tried other free games in the App Store but they all seem way to chaotic, noisy and busy. This one is calming. (At least to me).

  16. 16.

    JanieM

    WG — I play Wordle every day and I don’t get any messages from the NYT. Is that because I don’t have a login and am therefore not logged in? I dunno.

    I keep my own stats, plus all kinds of other Wordle data (frequency of letters…) in a spreadsheet. It keeps me entertained.

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I’ve just quit playing Worldle after a few months of enjoying it. It was fun for a while, but they’ve started repeating countries, and that annoys me for some reason. Of course, a limit was always built in if they didn’t repeat. I fail to solve them a lot — I generally get into the right neighborhood, but I am bemused to find that I don’t really know the shapes of lots of countries, especially with no sense of scale to rely on.

    ETA: corrected some typos.

  20. 20.

    ThrehserK

    Wordle, Dordle, Six-letter Wordle, Quordle, Octordle, Sedecordle, and (once in a great while) I go to Duotrigordle.

    Worldle and Globe-Game.

    Mathler and Nerdler.

    Crosswordle and Squardle.

  21. 21.

    Jay C

    I’ve also become a Spelling Bee addict: but their word list – I’ve come to realize – is pretty much arbitrary: my first email to them was to complain about the word BOLE not being recognized (though BOLO and BOLA: neither one of English derivation, were): I did get a response: but it was a form email: which was the same I received from every complaint, so yeah FTFNYT….

  22. 22.

    jnfr

    I’ve been ripping songs from a bunch of old CDs, preparing to streamline my office a bit. It’s tedious but I’m glad to have it done.

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Good for you, getting stuff done!

  24. 24.

    Starfish

    I have been playing a little Sedecordle. I lost today.

    I was playing Square Word for a while and Waffle Game.

    i like puzzle games.

    There are some geography ones that I am not so good at.

    There are also some music ones like Heardle. Usually, I skip over the first ten seconds of the music ones before I get them, but I surprisingly got today’s Heardle in two seconds. This is very unusual because I am not good at music.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    @JanieM: I never knowingly logged in to the NYT, but somehow they know it’s me and they logged me in.  If I log out, i just get the message asking me to log in.

    So many reasons to hate the Net NYT.(and autocorrect)

  29. 29.

    Skepticat

    I too loathe the TFNYT, but I also found an app called Wordus, which works the same as Wordle but lets you do as many as you like.

  30. 30.

    SFAW

    Wordle, Quordle, Sedecordle, Hurdle, Waffle, Squardle, WordAll, Artle, Heardle.

    The last two are toughest for me, because I’m not particularly “well-read” (so to speak) re: the various artists, and Heardle has a lot of hippy music, i.e., recent stuff which I don’t really know or haven’t heard.

    Some of the words used in Wordle and Hurdle are ,,, uh, “uncommon,” but my success rate is still reasonably good.

    ETA: And FTFTFNYT, just on General Principles.

  32. 32.

    geg6

    I’m all in on podcasts lately.  I get TPM’s for some Josh Marshall commentary.  And for fun, it’s My Favorite Murder, Spectacle, Unspooled, Tenfold More Wicked, Disgraceland, The British History Podcast and The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    I don’t play any of these games, but I follow@(((BuffaloMeg))) and I get a kick out her posting her daily results for Quordle, Waffle, Antiwordle and Nerdle. Buffalo Meg is retired, a Buffalo Bills fan and feisty Democrat.

  34. 34.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    What would you do with a month free of responsibilities? I guess that depends on how easy you find it to stop scrolling Balloon-Juice comments.

  35. 35.

    RSA

    The National Gallery of Art has Artle, which is great. I suck at it.  See an image, guess the artist (with auto-completion in the text box).  You get four images, one at a time.  For me it’s educational and fun.

    Otherwise, over the past year I’ve subscribed to the NYTimes crossword puzzle.  I’ve gotten to the point where I can usually finish one without look-ups, though I’m much, much slower than the more experienced folks.  The daily Wordplay column explains each puzzle, and the comment section is lively and opinionated, so that’s also fun.

  37. 37.

    sab

    @daize: You travel in nicer circles than I do if you only just learned gibbet

    ETA After all these years still iffy on its pronunciation.

  42. 42.

    Ken

    What would I do if I had a month where I were free from even one of my responsibilities?

    Go slowly mad with worry that when you logged in there would be 649 messages from Cole, all titled “SITE NOT WORKING”?

  43. 43.

    Suzanne

    I play Worldle! Guess the country based on its shape.

    I also do Learned League, which is great, great fun.

  44. 44.

    Daoud bin Daoud

    My Twitter account was permanently suspended yesterday for “inciting hatred” yadda yadda. I’ve been extremely angry the past week, using “traitor” and “treason” quite liberally. I suspect I’m not the only raging progressive who got axed from Twitter recently. Does anybody know?

  45. 45.

    Heidi Mom

    I’ve been reading, as fast as I can, a series of Scottish crime novels by Denzil Meyrick.  The protagonist, Inspector Jim Daley, is a large, taciturn man with a troubled marriage and an alcoholic sidekick.  The setting is Kinloch, a village on the Kintyre peninsula in the west of Scotland.  I hadn’t heard of these until I read last year that they’re being made into a TV series starring Rory McCann (The Hound in Game of Thrones). so I found the first one, Whisky in Small Glasses, through interlibrary loan, then, needing to know What Happened Next to Inspector Daley and crew, bought the rest as slightly used paperbacks from Abe Books.  I’ve never been to Scotland, but now I feel as though I have.

  47. 47.

    Suzanne

    what would I do if I had a month where I were free from even one of my responsibilities?

    I would sleep. A lot.

  52. 52.

    Princess Leia

    Oh, thank you for this thread and all the awesome new games to try!!!! I have been doing Quordle, Dordle, Waffle, Worldle and Globle as a part of the wake up routine. Stopped Wordle when the FTNYT acquired it. The world of word puzzle makers intrigues me….

  53. 53.

    Spanky

    @Suzanne: That was Mrs Spanky’s prime job after she retired. She didn’t do so good at it. Sleep habits are hard to break, and after about three days your mind thinks your body is all caught up. It’s not.

  54. 54.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I’ve been playing Cult Of The Lamb, which is both dark and adorable.

    As for a free month… Moon Pony help me, I would write.  Maybe there is nothing left of me but an author now.  Fortunately or unfortunately, life is a neverending torrent of little interruptions.

    The first episode of Sandman was good.

  55. 55.

    (not actually a) Dr. Thouth Evans

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
     You are correct. Octordle is hardest. Even the hard version of 64ordle, with all the words you never saw in your life, can usually be solved by picking pronounceable letter combinations.

  60. 60.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I play Wordle and Spelling Bee every day; often, but less frequently, I’ll do Quordle and Worldle. One that’s fun for me, having worked for the Canadian Consulate for 25 years, is Canuckle: it’s exactly like Wordle, but each word has a distinctly Canadian connection.

    But then, I start every single day with a battery of games, puzzles, and quizzes. First, half a dozen word games; then a history trivia quiz, followed by some spatial logic (Tetris-style) puzzles; and finally, ten different card solitaire games, each of which requires a slightly different mind approach.

    I always justify this matutinal indulgence by saying that it staves off early-onset Alzheimer’s. That may, in fact, be the case, but the truth is I do it for the fun of it. Doing them all takes between 45 and 60 minutes each morning. For me, it’s a great way to crank up the brain when I first wake up.

  61. 61.

    Suzanne

    @Spanky: I used to be able to sleep through a war. No longer.

    I want to train myself to sleep on my back. It is hard.

    I am in one of those professions where old dudes hang on. Part of it is because a lot of them were workaholics their whole lives and they don’t have good relationships with friends and family. So work is all that remains. I have no interest in that being my future.

  62. 62.

    Delk

    Jigsaw puzzles on my iPad. Ravensburger Puzzle is completely updating their app. Hopefully for the better. In the meantime all of their puzzles are free!

  63. 63.

    Suzanne

    Does anyone else belong to Learned League? When it is “in season”, it is the highlight of my day.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Daoud bin Daoud: The popular tweeter Theophite got booted for stating that a democracy historically can’t effectively respond to direct attacks on its functioning with anything short of violence.

  65. 65.

    MattF

    @Suzanne: I can sleep on my back on my couch. Narrow, feet up, and cushions all around. In bed I go back and forth between back and sides, but actually fall asleep on my side most of the time.

  66. 66.

    Wag

    Quordle rocks.  And I hadn’t heard about the 100 practice game limit.  If true, then I expect to run out very soon.

  68. 68.

    brantl

    WG, if you were to post some of those popsicle recipes, I think people would appreciate them,…..

  70. 70.

    Ninedragonspot

    I Quordle every night before bed.   Three burner words covering all the vowels is usually enough to solve everything in 7.

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    @Wag: If you click the down arrow, it tells you how many practice games you have done.  I’m at 66.

    I think it’s really interesting that sometimes I am stuck so I just walk away, and sometime later I go back to it and immediately get the 2 remaining words.

  73. 73.

    zhena gogolia

    I do nyt and wapo crosswords every day. And New Yorker has them mon-fri. Plus they have Name Drop. On sundays I do the three nyt puzzles, the three wapo puzzles, New Yorker cryptic, Atlantic, and new york magazine. Also the mon thru fri Atlantic. On Monday I do BEQ, two puzzles. His hard ones are the hardest. I have no interest in wordle or spelling bee

  77. 77.

    Van Buren

     

     

    @Suzanne: I have been a predominantly stomach sleeper all my life. I had a pacemaker implanted last Monday; there’s no way I could lie on my stomach for the time being. Sleeping on my back is not easy to get used to.

  83. 83.

    Betsy

    WaterGirl. This post  is so bright and happy. It made me feel good!  You have made an awesome life.  We can all try for that.

    Thanks for the Quordle  tip. Gonna try it.

    I like to play BRDL as well.

    BRDL 203
    🥚🪶🥚🥚
    🥚🥚🪶🪶
    🥚🥚🥚🥚
    🪶🪶🥚🥚
    🥚🥚🐦🥚
    🐦🐦🐦🐦

  85. 85.

    Feathers

    I play Wordle and the NYT mini crossword and their Sudoku. Recently I got into Duolingo. Had tried it before and found it annoying, but decided to try again. When I looked at the list of  languages I saw Latin and knew I’d found a winner. I read older books that often have untranslated Latin. I can sort of pick my way through, but this is helping with the smaller connective words. I think the fact that it isn’t asking me to say anything helps a lot. There also won’t be any frustration with not actually being able to communicate in the language. I’m basically there for the vocabulary, so messing up all the grammar isn’t bothering me. I am taking it fairly seriously, though.

    I’m also reading lots of golden age detective fiction. Lots of Agatha Christie as my town’s library has pretty much all of it in large print books. I like them because I can read with my crap IKEA bedside light. Most recent one was The Hollow, which was very good and incredibly sad. I’m also reading Laura Thompson’s biography Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life. Did you know that her father was American and a very social person. He knew Henry James, who came to the house when Agatha was a child.

  86. 86.

    Suzanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: If you like it enough to join and compete, I can invite you. You get one season for free before you have to pay. I can’t remember how much it is, but it’s cheap.

  87. 87.

    Kevin

    Wordle, Heardle, worldle, Gordle (hockey player last names) and waffle are my daily plays. Wordle does have me saying FU more and more. NYT definitely has influenced it since taking over.

    I am however obsessed with this game lately  https://hexapipes.vercel.app/hexagonal/10/509

    a month off? I’ve been dreaming of a sabbatical so I’d definitely do that.

  88. 88.

    Origuy

    @Daoud bin Daoud: While I reported someone for harassments for calling a woman “a lying c**t” and she wasn’t even lying. I got back a reply that the tweet didn’t violate their standards.

  89. 89.

    frosty

    …what would I do if I had a month where I were free from even one of my responsibilities? I have no idea.

    Ooh, I know, because it’s happened to me: read every post and every comment in B-J. That will suck up at least 4 hours of your day. I really need to get back to my list of things and hobbies to do.

  90. 90.

    Timill

    Wordle, Worldle, Globle, Nerdle, Quordle, Octordle, Binerdle, Instant Nerdle.

    By then I’m usually alert enough to log onto work…

  93. 93.

    Rob

    Phrazle, Worldle, Globle, Wordle, Birdie, Waffle. Also Dordle, Quordle, Octordle, Heardle, BRDL. I try not to play the 16, 32, and 64 word games any more, as they take so much time.

    I also play a daily Spanish version of Wordle: https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

  95. 95.

    emrys

    Wordle, worldle, quordle and stardle.  In the last, all words must have some association with astronomy.   It is particularly fun when it is an oddly named star.  And for some reason I cannot understand, I am very successful at it.  😽

  97. 97.

    Splitting Image

    Another vote for Waffle. It, Quordle, Octordle and Worldle are my current favourites.

    If anyone is fond of old-school puzzles and games, the Internet Archive now has the first 88 issues of Games Magazine, from about 1977 to 1987, on their site. Logic puzzles, cryptograms, the world’s most ornery crosswords, and tons of other stuff.

    Games Magazine archive

  98. 98.

    PaulB

    For word games, I generally use my Kindle and play games like Every Word Crossings, Thread Words, Jigsaw Words, Shuffled Row, and Every Word. Unfortunately, Amazon no longer supports these games and they are not available on the 300 dpi Kindle e-readers, the ones made after about 2015. When the Kindle I’m using dies, these games will die with it.

  99. 99.

    Spanish Moss

    @WaterGirl: I also enjoy the Quordle practice games. According to stats I have played 242 practice games. I hadn’t heard that there were only 100, perhaps it just cycles through them again? I have noticed some repeat words, but certainly can’t remember old games well enough to know if a specific 4-word combination is a repeat.

  100. 100.

    Ivan X

    I fucking hate Wordle. Long before the NYT. My brain is not wired for it. I get no pleasure from it. Every time I play it, I think “I hate this fucking game.” After the 20th or so time I asked my partner to remind me, whenever I say I’m about to play Wordle, that I hate it.

  108. 108.

    Westlake

    Wordle, Quordle, Waffle, Framed, Hurdle (not the series of 5 one)

    I want to put in a strong recommendation for this version of Hurdle, which tells you how many tiles are correct / in the right place, but not where those tiles are:

    https://playhurdle.vercel.app/

    My success rate is only slightly over 50%, but when it works out it always feels like a good solve, sometimes extra lucky, often a solid train of deduction that feels like I cracked a code or something! (or so I imagine). My (games-playing) friendle and I call it “hardle”

    -the other version of hurdle annoys me and I can’t play it any more

    -I used to play BTS wordle every day but they have been recycling words

  110. 110.

    Spadizzly

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Sedecordle, 32ordle and occasionally 64ordle.

    At first I thought you were kidding, so I looked them up.  Wow.  I’ve done Octordle, but I’d imagine that once you reached 32 and beyond, that the board would be too cumbersome to view.  I’ll have to try it. Hey, it’s time for Wordle!

  111. 111.

    Spadizzly

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I like the Spelling Bee, but I’m too damned cheap to subscribe, so I play as long as it allows until it tries to entice me into subscribing with flattery:  “You know, you’re good at this! Subscribe, you cheap bastid!”

    Either that, or “Come back tomorrow.”

  112. 112.

    prostratedragon

    So little love for sudoku! That’s my main puzzle/doodle sheet these days. Prefer doing them with pencil and paper, but between printer driver issues and, well, reams of paper, I’ve become accustomed to the tablet version. I use genina.com, which doesn’t interrupt with ads.

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