2022 isstillthe Year of the Wordle.

Somehow it has maintained its hold on the public consciousness and over Google’s all-seeing algorithm.

OK, maybe not that last one.

After all that, it’s usually 10:30 a.m.

The bite-size, web-based delights were absolutely tanking my morning productivity.

Others were plain ripoffs seeking a quick buck.

Everybody was playing Wordle because Wordle gave us 15 minutes in every day to ourselves.

It broke up our never-ending doomscrolling with cute little emoji grids for a while there.

It’s still the best.

All hail.I’ll be playing it for the next five years.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Until I came acrossWafflein early 2022.

Wordle is long dead to me.

Waffle is a word game, just like Wordle.

It was created byJames Robinsonwho, according to his Twitter bio, is a “developer of things.”

James, you developed the hell out of this one, mate.

It’s got the yellow squares and the green squares.

It’s free to play.

you could easily share the neat results grid on social media with your friends.

Well, first of all the grid is shaped like a waffle – hence the name.

Swapping letters is the bread and butter of Waffle.

Morphing Wordle into a waffle grid is game changing.

(I am so sorry.)

Right off the bat, that makes it five times better than Wordle.

That’s just science.

But it’s what it does with its grid that makes Waffle a standout spinoff.

It gives you all the letters you gotta make those words.

However, you only get 15 swaps per day.

you’ve got the option to venture to swap tiles into their exact positions, rather than guess.

With Waffle, even though you have 15 moves per day, each puzzle is solvable in just 10.

The first few days I played, I struggled to keep under 10 moves.

I was routinely getting two or three stars.

Soon enough, I was trying to get a perfect game.

This is why I’ve come to love playing Waffle in the morning and eschewing all my Wordle spinoffs.

Getting a high score in Wordle – a two- or three-guess game – just feels like pure luck.

But a high score in Waffle feels earnt.

Also, Robinson seems to be having fun and iterating it since dropping the game back in February.

I know Wordle still hasn’t beenreplaced.

Those green and yellow grids aren’t going anywhere.

It might even bebetterthan Wordle.

I think it is.

Maybe you will, too.