Love Wordle? Try Byrdle!
If you’re anything like me, you start off every day with your routines - whatever they may be. For me, one of the very first things I do when I wake up is play Wordle. This word game, now owned and operated by the New York Times, was originally created by Josh Wardle, who coded the game as a birthday present for his partner. Since then, it has gone viral and millions of people play the game each day. Wordle, that is an online version of an old game show called Lingo, asks players to guess a five letter word and gives clues by coloring letters green (correct place) or yellow (correct letter - wrong place). Due it’s wild popularity, a LOT of spin off versions of the game have appeared, including Heardle - which was a music guessing game that was bought by Spotify and then shut down in May 0f 2023. But there is one version that is perfect for musicians - specifically choral musicians - called Byrdle. My dear friend and colleague Robin Hodson (a veteran choral performer and composer himself) first told me about Byrdle about a year ago. Byrdle is named after the famous composer William Byrd, and was created after a Twitter (X) account named QuireMemes asked someone if they could create it in January of 2022. Ask and ye shall receive! A coder named Robert Brignall created the FREE game, using a code base created by Mikha Davids. Here is how the game works:
Like Worlde, Byrdle has some very cool features that make it a little more challenging (as well as accessible). If you click on the gear icon in the top right corner, you can toggle on features such as Hard Mode (means you have to use any highlighted letters in subsequent guesses), dark theme (makes the background black), color blind mode, fancy font mode (uses an illuminated manuscript font), historical mode (which switches you to 6 letter words to guess), and no red letters (which disables highlighted letters in words that aren’t in the dictionary).
Byrdle is a perfect game for any musician - you don’t have to be a vocalist or choir enthusiast to guess the words. I now have made Byrdle part of my daily routine and its great. If you love Wordle, you’ll love Byrdle!