Name: Lewdle.
Age: Brand new.
Appearance: A lot like Wordle, at first.
Sorry, but I am absolutely determined never to find out what Wordle is. Wordle is a simple online word-guessing game that has taken the world by storm.
Damn you. Carry on. Players get six goes to guess a five-letter word. Colour-coding tells you which letters you have got wrong, which are right and which are right but in the wrong position.
Sounds like Mastermind – stupid. Nevertheless, millions of people play it every day. It rocketed in popularity when a feature was added that allows you to share your results on social media without revealing the answer.
And this Lewdle? Lewdle is exactly the same, but a not-safe-for-work version.
How can a nerdy word game be NSFW? All the answers are dirty.
Don’t dirty words contain four-letters? There’s another version of Wordle, called Sweardle, that uses four-letter words, but for obvious reasons it’s a bit easier than this.
Lewdle sounds pretty easy to me. The real challenge is that every guess must be a “valid 5 letter lewd word”, as determined by Lewdle. TITTY is one example offered for true beginners. BOOBS could also work.
Still, how hard can it be? There aren’t that many dirty five-letter words. You’d be surprised.
Would I? Let’s just say that some of them are quite specific and may oblige you to consult an online dictionary. But don’t do it at work, in case there are diagrams.
What sort of person would create such a thing? The author and games writer Gary Whitta. Lewdle has only been up and running for a matter of days and it’s already attracting a lot of attention.
I guess anything really successful will have its copycats. It’s true. The real Wordle – free to play and free from ads – has spawned a number of monetised knock-offs; Apple just removed a bunch of clones from its App store. But Lewdle is also ad-free and contains a link to the original.
That’s nice. Lewdle is many things, but it’s not nice.
Do say: “I always start with BONER – it’s got a lot of good letters.”
Don’t say: “That’s what that means? I always thought it was something to do with corsets.”
