Some of the more interesting Wordle variants have come from treating the green and yellow squares not as hints at a single solution, but as defining a pool of possible words. Absurdle looks like it’s changing its “mind” as you play, but it’s really narrowing down the pool of possible answers until only one is left. Wordlebot, the New York Times’s analysis tool, grades your solving performance based on how efficiently your guesses divided the possibilities into pools. And now, WordAll pulls back the curtain entirely. Instead of guessing a single word, you’re given clues that define a pool of words, and you have to figure out all of the words in that pool.
WordAll gives you two guesses already filled out, so don’t worry about picking the perfect starter. It will tell you how many words are in the pool. For example, for the game board above, the solutions turned out to be NATAL, NAVAL, NAVEL, and TALON.
Only words in the pool are allowed as guesses, so it’s a bit like playing in original Wordle’s “hard mode.” (For example, if a letter is green, legal guesses must all use that letter in that spot.)
Every time you guess a word in the pool, the colors of the squares update to give you hints for what remains. For example, if you guessed a word that started with an N, and that square is half green and half yellow, you know that at least one of the remaining words has an N in that place, and that at least one other has an N in a different place. Once you guess all the words that start with N, that square will now appear in all yellow.
I find it a fun and interesting game to play. Not the hardest Wordle variation, and not the easiest. You’re scored on your time to guess all the words, and the number of wrong guesses you attempted to enter along the way. For example, I solved today’s puzzle (not the one shown) in 4:20 with two wrong answers. Maybe you’ll have better luck?
