Wordle has taken the world by storm, but if you ever wanted to be the quizmaster instead of a competitor, Adverswordle is for you.

The idea behind Adverswordle is simple: rather than racking your brains trying to come up with the five-letter word in a limited number of turns as you would in Wordle, you set the word for an AI and watch it sweat instead. 

Simply think of a five-letter word, load up the game and then begin marking the AI’s guesses in the tried and tested fashion. If a letter is correct and in the right place, click it until it turns green. If it’s right but in the wrong place, make it yellow. As you do this, you can see the AI’s brain working, as a thought bubble appears with possible words that the solution could still be.

Once you’ve marked the answer, submit it and the AI will instantly guess again, making a mockery of the amount of time I’ve spent staring at the screen over the past few weeks when playing Wordle. 

Of course, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the entire dictionary at its disposal, your AI opponent in Adverswordle will get the word eventually: your goal is to just delay the inevitable for as long as possible, and for that reason there’s no cap on the number of guesses. But if you try to cheat the system by inventing words, or muddling up your green and yellow marking system, you’ll instantly lose.

My best effort was my starting word go-to of “AUDIO”, but even then the bot got it in just four turns. The creator, when introducing Adverswordle on Reddit, claimed a personal best of 12, so you have something to aim for. While Adverswordle prevents you from playing more than once a day, just like the original, it’s easy to sidestep the restriction with an incognito window, so you can get some practice in. 

Is Adverswordle good enough for a place on our list of the best Wordle alternatives? Time and more playing will tell, but it’s certainly an interesting twist on the formula, and it’s nice to be the one setting the puzzles for a change. 

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If you prefer a bit of human fallibility in your quizzing, Wordle Unlimited also lets you make your own puzzles for friends who, unlike the Adverswordle bot, aren’t guaranteed to always win in the end.