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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few W-E-E-K-S, you’ve probably heard of Wordle, the highly addictive daily puzzle that involves doing your best to guess a random five-letter word in a set number of tries. Since taking the world by storm, the game has been purchased by The New York Times, which is about the closest a brain teaser can come to having a Cinderella story.
While the Times has announced that the uber-popular daily word game will remain outside of a paywall and ad-free for now, there’s no guarantee it will stay that way in the future. Luckily, a new digital puzzle game has garnered attention this week from outlets including Kotaku, Second Ave. Sagas and more that transfers the format of Wordle to the world of the NYC subway. (It's only slightly more difficult than deciphering the meaning of a delayed train announcement.)
Subwaydle, is a browser game where you’re given six chances to guess a subway trip with two different transfers. Similar to Wordle’s requirement that every guess be a real word, Subwaydle requires every guess to be an actual subway ride one could take underground in NYC—that is, of course, if all the trains are running as they should. If a train line isn’t part of the route it’s displayed as gray, if it is in the route but currently in the wrong spot it will be shaded yellow and if it’s both the right line and the right spot it will show up as green. A quick stop at a subway bar is not included on any trip.
The game was invented by Sunny Ng, an NYC software engineer who was partially inspired by pre-pandemic trivia nights at the New York City Transit Museum. Give a puzzle a go yourself, to see if you can crack it, but be warned: each weekday’s puzzle can be one of 6,835 combinations. (Hilariously, there are only 4,188 combinations on weekends because the game changes to reflect weekend service.) Heads up: you can ask for a hint that gives the trip’s start and end stations.
Good luck reaching your destination!