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Kelly CohenESPN
All it took was one biology class to create the latest Wordle variant.
Two high school students, whose parents asked that their names not be shared because they’re minors, recently came up with the game of Weddle — and yes it is named after former NFL safety Eric Weddle.
“One of us develops the website and handles all bugs and updates, while the other runs social media,” the creators told ESPN.
Weddle told ESPN’s Jamison Henley that the creators had reached out to him for authorization, describing it as “Pretty wild.”
In Weddle, the user has eight tries to guess an NFL player’s name, team, division, position, height, age and jersey number. Like with the original Wordle game, a yellow box means the guess is nearing the right answer and a green box indicates a correct guess. An even harder version is on the way.
You will have 10 guesses to complete hard mode as opposed to 8. The position box will come up yellow if the player you guessed plays on the same side of the ball as the correct player. There will be over 2000 possible players so be ready for a challenge!
— Weddle (@weddlegame) March 30, 2022
The creators said they picked the name Weddle because it sounds like Wordle and because “we’re also fans of Eric Weddle and everything he’s done recently.” Weddle’s most recent move was unretiring in order to help the Los Angeles Rams win the Super Bowl.
The New York Times bought Wordle from software engineer Josh Wardle in January for an undisclosed sum in the low seven figures after the game became an internet sensation. A user has six tries to guess a random five-letter word. Yellow means the letter is in the word but in the wrong place, and green means the letter is in the right place.
With the addition of Weddle to the internet, there are now Wordle spinoffs for fans of every major American sports league. NBA fans have Poeltl (for San Antonio Spurs center Jakob Poeltl), MLB fans have WARdle (for Wins Above Replacement, or WAR) and NHL fans can play Gordle (for Hockey Hall of Famer Gordie Howe).