The Wordle menace.

Once there was a guy named Wardle who wanted to do something nice for his gal, who loved word games. So he invented a little five-letter word guessing game he called Wordle. 

Well. 

Since then, as you probably know, that little game has become as addictive as crack and as big a fad as the Pet Rock. The brilliant little twist, allowing people to post results of the once-a-day puzzle without giving away the answer, makes it a natural for social media. Now people are playing it all over. Josh Wardle, the inventor, sold it to the New York Times, a former newspaper, for million. It's become hot enough to get lampooned by New Yorker cartoonists. 

But more than that, it's been ripped off mightily. Wardle's idea was not entirely original (see, for example, the TV game show Lingo, which originally aired in 1987), so while the Wordle name and design is trademarkable, the game is not. So now we have Facebook's own Daily Word Puzzle, which is available as a five-, six-, and seven-letter game. 

Then there's WordHurdle, which has five-, six-, and the even tougher four-letter variant. Four-letter words don't run through letters as fast, and there are many four-letter words, so that version is the trickiest. It can inspire you to say your own inappropriate four-letter words. The site also has a game called Phrazle, in which you have to guess an entire phrase.

For a real challenge, there is the evil Antiwordle. In that game you don't win; you just try to stay alive as long as you can by not guessing the right word. The problem is, when you use a letter that isn't in the word you can't use it again; when you use a letter that is in the word, you must use it again; and when you use a letter that's in the word in the right position, you must use it there again. My worst score so far is three; my best is fifteen.

And even that's just the beginning. Quordle has you solve four five-letter Wordle-type word puzzles at the same time using the same letters.

Octordle has you solve eight five-letter word puzzles at the same time using the same letters.

This just opens the door for Hexadecordle, you realize. 

I have only played it once, but there's also Lewdle for dirty words only. (They call their own repository of possible answers the "Dicktionary.")

Words not your bag? Well, there's Nerdle for math kids, or Globle and Worldle for geography fans. By now there's probably Nukedle for atomic weights and Spacedle for constellations and Xdle for algebra and Garble for gibberish. I can't keep up with them all. 

Where will it all end? It'll fade at some point, when the smart kiddies who made Wordle a hit go on to something else. Management at the Times will panic, and in trying to "improve" Wordle will ruin it, just as they did with their newspaper. And then we'll go on to some other damn thing, I guess.