Perceptle versus Wordle

Both games ask you to show up once a day and then stop. That is where the likeness ends. Wordle, now on The New York Times, gives you six tries at a five-letter word and paints tiles green, yellow, or gray. The commonly cited answer list is 2,309 words, and the New York Times bought the game in 2022. Perceptle never shows a word. It runs Count, Track, Angle, Tempo, and Split, then prints a number from 0 to 100.

I play them back to back on purpose. Wordle rewards a remembered vocabulary and a process of elimination. Perceptle rewards a two-second look and a steady tap. Sharing a Wordle grid tells a friend the exact guess pattern. Sharing a Perceptle total, such as 84 B, does not reveal the five targets. That is why this site can discuss scores without spoiling a word, and why the answer pages have to be more careful than a Wordle blog.

Connections, also from The New York Times, is a closer cousin only in the sense that it is another daily grid: sixteen words, four groups. It still is not a perception test. If you arrived here from “games like Wordle” and you want more looking and less spelling, the list of nearby daily games is the better next page. If you want today’s Perceptle, start on the home page.