Like most people of the internet, I have been charmed in recent days by the rise of Wordle, the one-a-day word guessing game made by a guy for his puzzle-loving partner. How wholesome! The ad-free, cost-free, notification-free web game feels like the perfect antidote to…well, pretty much everything else on the entire web. After my first play my immediate thought was, of course: there needs to be a gay version of this! Fortunately, queers of the internet were already on the case with Queerdle, a gay Wordle spinoff. Unfortunately, I was mildly stumped by some of the gay male lingo included and fretted that I might one day not be able to get the correct answer. I realised that in order to protect my 100% success rate, the only option would be to create a version so incredibly specific to my own interests (aka being queer and reading this very website) that I could not fail.
Thanks to the brilliant creators of Queerdle (and the clone it was based on, Worble) making their code freely available for reuse on Glitch, I was able to make this puzzle dream a reality! Thus I present to you: Tirtl! (yes, this is a riff on Riese’s beloved, long-running TIRTIL column). Every day you have the incredible opportunity to guess a 5-letter queer-adjacent word that is probably related to niche Autostraddle content!
Why delay, go and play Tirtl today! But only once — just like the original, you’ll have to wait until the next day for a fresh puzzle.
(Also, if you’re craving more queer puzzle content and are an A+ member, you can still go back in time and solve these queer history-themed puzzles from the end of last year!)
Note: Your puzzle-solving celebrations are encouraged in the comments, but please try not to spoil the word of the day for anyone.
