The Wordle craze has taken the world by storm (myself included — apologies to anyone reading this who’s had the misfortune of being my Facebook friend the past few weeks), and variants on the concept have begun popping up.
For local Wordle fans, “LongIslandle” may be of particular interest.
Developed by the folks at Discover Long Island, it follows the same rules as the popular word game — guess a five-letter word in six tries or less once a day — but with a distinctly Long Island theme. The game will be updated every weekday, and players can submit their own relevant words and get a prize if it is chosen for the game.
“Our team keeps a keen eye on the latest trends to keep Long Island top of mind for local, national and global visitors and ‘LongIslandle’ is the latest example of that out-of-the-box thinking,” said Kristen Jarnagin Reynolds, President and CEO of Discover Long Island in a press release.
Wordle was originally developed by Josh Wardle, a software engineer, as a game he could play with his partner. It is very similar to the 1980s game show, Lingo, which will soon return to CBS hosted by RuPaul. Last month, Wordle, which has been played by over 2 million people, was sold to The New York Times Company.
LongIslandle came together quite quickly. Alyssa Paxton, the digital media and design strategist for Discover Long Island, started working on the code for the game. It had 3,000 page views by noon on Friday, Feb. 18 when it launched.
LongIslandle is free to play, so head over to Discover Long Island’s site to start guessing. While you’re at it, submit some North Fork-themed words and represent!