Hot on the heels of the most recent PGA tournament, The New York Times is introducing a twist to its favorite word game Wordle that, as far as I know, absolutely no one asked for: Wordle Golf. Like the standard game, which is a more pacifist hangman, Wordle Golf requires you to guess its hidden word in as few steps as possible, only this time, you’re directly competing against your friends.
While the standard Wordle allows you to screenshot or share a link to your score and gloat to uninterested people in your life, Wordle Golf gets them involved directly with your word puzzle through downloadable scorecards. Choose your opponents, pick nine straight days to play Wordle, and make sure everyone is recording their daily score on the scorecard. At the end of the nine days, everyone should add up their scores, and the player with the lowest number wins.
The Times, in a June 5 blog post, describes Wordle Golf as a way to up “the ante for a few days.” In this vein, the Times is also throwing in a few cutthroat (well, as cutthroat as Wordle Golf can be) stipulations to the game. Like, “if you miss a day, add an extra seven points to your score.”
“Didn’t finish and got the deadly x/6?,” the Times asks, “Add an extra half-point to your six. If you commit the worst act and spoil a word for others in the group, immediately add four points to your daily score. If Wordle has unfortunately been spoiled for you, stop at the number of guesses you have made and record that score.”
I admit with some embarrassment that I am still an avid daily Wordle user—it’s part of my nightly routine. The only thing I know about golf, though, is that its stereotypical player looks to me like they would get married inside a Bass Pro Shop. I wish them congratulations, but I think Wordle Golf, too, will appeal to a very specific kind of person. Probably a dad, or at the very least, probably someone named Matt.
Will you be playing Wordle Golf? Is your name Matt? Let me know in the comments.