Wordle started a genre. Within a year of its launch, dozens of variants appeared, each adding a new twist. Quordle gave you four puzzles at once. Octordle scaled that to eight. Sedecordle pushed it to sixteen. There's even a thirty-two version called Duotrigordle for the truly unhinged.
This guide compares the major Wordle variants and explains who each one is for.
Wordle (the original)
One puzzle, six guesses, daily reset. The version that started it all. Now owned by The New York Times and embedded in their games subscription.
Best for: casual players, people building daily routines, anyone who wants a five-minute puzzle that fits in a coffee break.
Average solve time: 3-5 minutes once you've developed a strategy.
Difficulty: moderate. The answer list is curated to avoid the most obscure five-letter words.
Quordle
Four Wordle puzzles, played simultaneously. Each guess applies to all four boards at once. You have nine guesses to solve all four. If you fail any, you fail the whole game.
Quordle changes the game in a fundamental way. Your starting word matters less because you need information about four different answers. The optimal Quordle opener is something like ARISE that maximizes vowel coverage across multiple words.
Best for: Wordle players who want a longer, more strategic puzzle.
Average solve time: 8-15 minutes.
Difficulty: moderate to hard. The challenge isn't any individual word; it's tracking four states at once.
Octordle
Eight puzzles, thirteen guesses. The same scaling logic as Quordle, taken further. Each guess gives you information about all eight boards.
Octordle is where the strategy genuinely changes. You can no longer guess a candidate word from any single board until you've reduced the field on all eight. The right approach is "explore until guess 6, then commit." Most experienced Octordle players use 4-5 guesses to test as many unique letters as possible before committing to specific answers.
Best for: serious Wordle players looking for a real challenge.
Average solve time: 15-25 minutes.
Difficulty: hard. The cognitive load of tracking eight boards is real.
Sedecordle and Duotrigordle
Sixteen and thirty-two boards respectively. These are no longer puzzles; they're meditative exercises. Most players who try them once never come back. A small community treats them as the chess of the Wordle family.
Best for: people who like spreadsheets.
Average solve time: 30+ minutes.
Other notable variants
Worldle
Guess the country from its silhouette. Six guesses, with distance and direction hints after each wrong answer. Geography buffs love it.
Heardle
Guess the song from a one-second clip, with longer clips on subsequent guesses. RIP, the original Heardle was discontinued, but several clones exist.
Squardle
A 5x5 grid where you solve five horizontal and five vertical words simultaneously. Brutal.
Crosswordle
You're given the answer; you need to figure out the sequence of guesses that would have revealed it. Reverse Wordle, basically.
Absurdle
The game changes the answer to whatever word makes your guess maximally unhelpful. The opposite of fair, but fascinating.
Which should you play?
If you've never played any of these, start with Wordle. It's the cleanest version and the foundation for everything else. Spend a month getting your average to 4.0 or below.
If Wordle has gotten boring, try Quordle. The added complexity refreshes the puzzle without overwhelming.
If you have an hour to kill on a Saturday, Octordle is genuinely fun.
If you want to feel something, try Absurdle once.
Using a solver across variants
Most Wordle solvers, including ours, work for any variant that uses the standard 5-letter format and color logic. Plug in your guess for any single board and the solver will narrow the field. For Quordle and Octordle, run the solver per board. The math doesn't care which board you're on.