Wordle’s creator has a new challenge for puzzle lovers

The creator of Wordle wants your text threads to stop looking like: 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 and start looking more like: “taxi → reduced → fee ✅.”

Josh Wardle, who sold Wordle to the New York Times in 2022, on Tuesday officially released his next game: Parseword.

And this time around, the puzzle goes far beyond guessing a simple five-letter word.

Let’s break it down

Parseword is loosely inspired by cryptic crossword puzzles, which use wordplay and hidden clues to solve each entry as its own mini puzzle within a larger grid.

The mechanics and clues vary from puzzle to puzzle, but the basic idea is simple: players transform a sequence of words until two phrases match.

• Words can be reversed, replaced with synonyms, and/or combined—often in different orders—to reach the solution.
• For example, in the puzzle “predator returns run,” “predator” can be swapped for “wolf,” which is then “returned” (reversed) to form “flow.” Flow = Run. Puzzle solved. Got it?😉

Daily puzzle games: so hot right now

Online puzzle games like sudoku, Strands, and Spelling Bee—or DONUT Games’ own original: Conjoiner—have surged in popularity over the past several years, with many pointing to Wordle as the first spark.

Games now account for over 50% of all time spent inside the New York Times’ app, with Wordle, Connections, and the Mini pulling 10+ million weekly players. And LinkedIn, which added games last year, says millions of users play them every single day.

But can Parseword reach the same heights? Wardle openly admits his new puzzle is much trickier than Wordle, and players may need a few tries to fully understand how it works.

Still, he hopes Parseword brings something new to the puzzle landscape: a daily challenge that might leave players scratching their heads each morning.