What is ‘Heardle’? New app is like ‘Wordle’ but for music fans
Users listen to snippets of music to guess the track within six tries
A new app inspired by ‘Wordle’ has arrived for music lovers called ‘Heardle’.
The app uses the premise of the viral word game, which gives users six chances to guess a five-letter word. Wordle was originally created by Josh Wardle for his partner, and was bought by The New York Times earlier this year for over $1 million.
To play ‘Heardle’, users are given snippets of one song a day to guess the correct track within six tries. For every incorrect answer, the snippet becomes longer.
The app’s website describes the game as a “respectful homage to Wordle, with a musical twist.”
“Each ‘Heardle’ is semi-randomly plucked from a long list of popularly streamed artists. Much love, and all relevant copyright, to those featured.
“‘Heardle’ was made for a small group of friends, then somehow gained millions of players overnight. Please be kind.”
At the beginning of this year, more than two million people played ‘Wordle’. Analysis by Word.Tips found that Sweden is the world’s best country at the game, with an average of 3.72 guesses. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, ranked 15th, with an average score of 3.89.
The popularity of the game has been far-reaching, with users posting their scores in the form of emoji-style coloured blocks on Twitter.
Paul McCartney is among famous users, who recently used his ‘Wordle’ score to tease fans in a confirmation of his Glastonbury headline slot.
The full line-up was announced Friday (March 4), which will see the Beatles frontman joining Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar as headliners.
Sharing a cryptic post that seemingly confirmed his attendance, McCartney’s post read: “Wordle 121 25/6,” along with six green squares.
Glastonbury fans soon spotted that 121 marked the number of days until the festival, while 25/6 was believed to mean 25 June, the Saturday of the festival which runs from 22-26 June.
As words of the day also traditionally only consist of five letters, fans realised the six letters represented “Glasto”.
Following the global appeal of ‘Wordle’, other variations of word games have been created, including ‘Quordle’, which is four games or ‘Wordle’ in one, and ‘Octordle’, which uses eight grids and asks users to guess a country. While a battle royale version called ‘Squabble’ pits 99 plays against each other to guess the word the quickest.