The Wordle Spin-Off For Music Lovers Is Here

Look, I don’t mean to offend anyone, but the whole Wordle thing is a bit ‘done’ now, isn’t it?

Not only has the word game spanned the full fairytale sequence of going from a puzzle that a nice Welsh man made for his partner being bought by a gazillion dollars for the New York Times, we’ve just had word that an Australian city is home to the best Wordle players in the world.

We’ve already mastered the game, people! It’s time to move on. And by that I mean, it’s time for Heardle: the latest Wordle spin-off to join the likes of Nerdle, Worldle and Blerdle, and yes, that last one was made up.

The idea behind Heardle is simple — there are no green and blue tiles, in fact, there are no tiles at all. Users are just invited to guess which song is playing after listening to a couple of seconds of its introduction. If you’re not able to guess the song right away, you’re given a couple of more seconds, then a couple more, then a couple more.

A nice thing about the game is that it sometimes reminds you of the songs you forgot existed. Yesterday’s solution, for example, was Outkast’s ‘Ms Jackson’, which I’m now listening to on Spotify on repeat.

The other nice thing about Wordle’s musical alternative is that it can’t really make you feel stupid. A lot of Wordle fans famously complained that the game was getting too hard — maybe even wanky — after being bought out by the New York Times.

new wordle is getting pretentious?

— dan levy (@danjlevy) February 20, 2022

Taking its cues from Wordle, though, Heardle only puts out one song a day, so that users don’t fall into a weird, obsessive spiral of song-guessing. Do your one Heardle, then move on with your life. And don’t stress: there’ll be another one tomorrow.

You can play Heardle right over here.