How to Play Wordle Golf and Turn Wordle Into a Competitive Sport

When you think of The New York Times’s placid yet addictive game Wordle, the term competitive sport probably isn't the first to come to mind, yet here we are. The New York Times has found a way to up the stakes of the calming word game by creating Wordle Golf, a nine-day-long endeavor with winners, losers, and everything in between.

Wordle Golf is free to play and extremely low maintenance. All you need is some consenting participants, internet access, and your trusty thinking cap.

Wordle Golf takes the relaxing Wordle experience and combines it with the rules of golf to turn it into a competitive game you can play with friends. The main goals of Wordle are to “have fun and solve the word in as few guesses as possible.” But doesn’t the thought of competing with your family and friends make everything more fun?

The ingenious combination of Wordle and golf was announced in a June 5, 2023, press release on The New York Times website. It even came complete with an official scorecard (via the NYT) created by Alex Rainert, The New York Times’ head of audio production, who played Wordle with his friends for an impressive 18 days straight. There's also an Excel scorecard via the NYT press release for those "looking for an easier desktop experience".

Wordle Golf doesn't require a lot of time to play, and there are even some brilliant productivity lessons you can learn from playing Wordle. So if you have someone to go up against in a battle of Wordle Golf, and you’re ready to get your game on, here’s how you can play.

To fully understand Wordle Golf, one must first understand Wordle. Wordle is a word-guessing game owned by The New York Times, where you have six attempts or fewer to guess a five-letter word. Think of a more censored version of Hangman, and you’ve pretty much got Wordle.

Wordle Golf, however, is a little more involved than your classic Wordle. Instead of accepting your loss, pretending like it never happened, and moving on with your day, Wordle Golf requires you to enter your score on a scorecard and share it with your family and friends.

Wordle Golf is played over nine straight days. Each day you play a round of Wordle and enter your score on the scorecard. These scores are calculated at the end of the nine-day period, and the player with the lowest score wins. Easy right?

Your score reflects the number of tries it takes you to guess the word. And to spice it up even more, there are also additional rules and penalties that apply. If you lose the game, add an extra half-point to your score of six. If you spoil the word for someone else, add another four points to your score. And if you commit the cardinal sin of missing a day, that's a hefty seven points to add to your score.

If we've caught your attention, and you're ready to put your skills to the test in a game of Wordle, here is how you can do so. To begin, open Wordle on your browser and press Play.

You will then be presented with six empty five-letter slots. Your first guess is an important one. The word could be anything, so picking something that has a good variation of letters and a few vowels is a great starting point.

Type in your choice and press Enter to submit your guess. You will get the following information in return:

• If one or more of your letters turns green, you got the correct letter in the right spot.
• If one or more of your letters turns yellow, that letter is in the word but not in that spot.
• If all your letters are grey, none of them are correct.

Once you’ve successfully (or unsuccessfully) guessed Wordle’s word of the day, enter your score into your scorecard and calculate your total at the end of the nine days to see who victory belongs to. The word will reset each day at midnight.

The name of the game with Wordle is to have fun with it, but if you want to be on top of your game and beat your friends and family, there are several Wordle tips and tricks you can learn to improve your score.

Not only is Wordle an unsuspectingly fun experience, but it can also help broaden your vocabulary by exposing you to words you may have never heard before. And adding a little healthy competition to the mix never fails to make things even better.

So get your family, friends, or even your co-workers involved, and let the Wordle Golf obsession begin. Who knows? As you play game after game, you might go on to beat Alex Rainert's impressive 18-day Wordle streak.