Meanwhile, among the many many Wordle variants and games-inspired-by-Wordle out there is one that map aficionados ought to appreciate: Worldle. Every day you have six chances to guess the name of a country based on an outline map. If you guess wrong, you’re given the distance and direction to the correct answer.
The problem with this is that if you know your geography it’s astonishingly easy, at least in default mode. It’s rare for me to need more than one try—unless, for a totally hypothetical example that has nothing at all to do with one stumper last week, it’s a nondescript atoll in the middle of the ocean, and then it’s as much because you didn’t think it was on the list, like a Scrabble set that unexpectedly includes þ, ð and ß. But you can increase the difficulty level by rotating the country image, or by hiding it: then you have to rely on the distances and directions alone. I should try it that way.
