The Wordle World Championship 

I think this game would be improved with a less brutal scoring system and same sized categories. The decreasing 6,5,4,3,2,1 categories seems a little overengineered, if you had 4 groups of 5 words each, participants would have a better chance of hitting at least a few first or second word guesses, which would be an exciting moment that's incredibly rare in the normal game. I'm also not a fan of 4 letter and 6 letter wordle but that may just be me

This is the sort of game that would benefit from having a website built around it. But it looks a lot of fun!

"These are dangerous and I'm scared of them" -- me with literally every word puzzle in existence.

You know you're British when you guess pasty instead of pasta.

17:48 haha, the genuine shock. Awesome run Mark. There's an element of luck to some of it, but would still be very impressed by anyone with a higher score than that, especially that quick.

Loved this way more than just the standard wordle would love to see more, it’s amazing to see how quickly mark thinks of words

This scoring system is BRUTAL

The dictionary according to Mark Goodliffe: "ardour": noun, stupid "yurt": noun, crazy

Well done Mark. For anyone interested, the encrypted text in each link appears to be formed with a Vigenère cipher using the word 'wordle' as the key.

It's interesting how 5 letters is kind of easier than both 4 and 6. With 4 you have fewer letters and guesses available, whereas with 6 at least on hard mode it's very easy to get stumped.

So impressed by the way you use words to rearrange laters, get missing ones... all at a incredible fast pace. wow!

22 points, counting a -9 for word #4. Breakdown for 1,2,3,4,5,6,X tries was {0,3,9,6,2,0,1} Highlight was getting #17 in two tries. Stableford scoring system is meant to encourage aggressive play in golf. As it applies to this game, it encourages us to try for 1 or 2 guesses, which was occasionally successful for me.

In answer to Mark's question (don't scroll if you don't want spoilers) . . . . . . A 'focus' is one of two points used to construct an ellipse, like an offset center point. Also, the Rangers are from NY and are a hockey team. The Bruins are also hockey.

Focus is part of an ellipse and other conics. Trial is sometimes used in statistics.

10 points. The most difficult part was keeping track of all the links in all windows and tabs. And some categories were iffy.

Love watching your process when working these out.

A very fun game! I got 28 but it took me a whole night to think of the best possible guesses. The four-letter words are brutal. Also I am not native so I got misled and thought animals and weapons are one of the categories lol. Please make more of these Mark! Maybe make them in groups of five to enhance playability. Love from Hong Kong.

Took my time with this and amazed to end up with 27 points. Helped considerably by getting an NHL team in one guess and only dropping 4 points overall. Plenty luck along the way.

That marathon looks like so much fun!

The guy who made this is a fan of the NHL. Love the channel, keep it up

Your ability to take letters and transform them in the different words is phenomenally quick

Your guesses are amazing and fast!

Some words didn't load for me, so I couldn't make a score based on them. For those that did work, though...I did awful. Provided I didn't make any scoring mistakes based on the explanation at the start, -33

Net score +3. Took me an absolute age and found out very tough. Highlight was a 2 on #15.

I got 11 points. Got a brutal -5 on a 4-letter puzzle, but then immediately got a +5 on the next 6-letter puzzle, so I'm not even mad.

-3... Juju was painful. Plus, I think I started to lose stamina towards the second half and got sloppy.

Thanks Mark for sharing. 36 points. Managed to get lucky with game #12 with 1 guess. Accumulated points in sequential order as follows via hard mode (0,2,4,1,3,3,3,8,10,15,17,25,27,32,31,31,33,35,37,36,36). I enjoyed learning to spell a couple words the right way 😉

16:28 Finally😆 For 20 seconds you seemed to be human. When I’m doing wordles, in my language (danish), my average time is around 4 minutes, (but in danish we also have 3 extra letters, and all of them are vowels).

As a New York Rangers fan, the category and word tickled me pink. LGR!

I took (much) longer, but ended up with 17. As for many people, the one word cost me 8 points. The categories helped me a little, but one category itself seemed questionable, and one entry in the 6 category seems like a weak choice. But overall a brilliant idea. I'm eager to conceive my own "related wordles" challenge.

I used so many of the same guesses, including starting with piano. The same last 3 guesses for the 2nd 4 letter word. I took one extra step more often, so my total score was 0, but at least I solved them all.

I got 9 points, I only missed one word with two grey letters and I even managed to get one of them in two guesses. Time to watch the video to see how I compare to Mark!

Bruins, Sabres, Rangers, and Sharks are all NHL hockey teams. This Canadian was yelling at the screen. LOL.

Nice job Mark and impressive considering you didn’t know American hockey teams.

Loved this challenge. 😎😎😎 28 points. The scoring system is brutal but also a great part of the challenge

The difference between how long it took me (both time and guesses) and Mark is GIGANTIC

This was a lot of fun. Thank you for posting this! I would love to see this again, hoping for every other week. Willing to construct them if interested. For next time, I suggest the following: * no bonus/penalty for individual times; only track overall time to complete all 21. Use overall time to award a speed bonus: Multiply overall score by 2 if done under 21 minutes, by 3 if under 17 minutes, by 4 if under 14 minutes, and by 5 if under 12 minutes. * to make the 6 categories more useful, when randomizing the words, randomize the order of each category, and randomize the word order within each category, but keep the words in each category together.

Very good and enjoyable. ^_^ The Teams were from the NHL, and probably goes down into the minors and school names from there.

I finished somewhere around +15. Only one word I failed to get (last guess had all green except 1 gray), and I think I had three different ones in two guesses. For my 6-letter starting word, I decided to use "COSIGN" for all of the puzzles -- that made one of those pretty easy.

I got +21. I used the categories more than I thought I would, which allowed me to get two of them in 2. Frequency by number of guesses: 2:2 3:8 4:8 5:2 6:1

for me 6 of them didnt work, so im going to pretend that impacted my score negatively due to lack of categorie knowledge. Ended up with the astounding score of -1

I ended with 19 points. I got #8, #10 and #18 in 2 guesses. #4 and #17 in 6 guesses.

Would help if they show the correctly placed letters on the new line pre-filled in, I believe they do that on our (dutch) game show with this game.

Ended up with 6 points. I didn't watch the part where you told about the themes beforehand so I missed a pretty big clue there. Solved all but one word. It was one of the 4 letter words which gave me -9 points. I did notice the themes myself later on and it helped me guess some of the words a bit faster.

I would like to pick this man’s brain, hes so dam quick, that yurt guess really blew my mind

Awesome video, Mark. Oh, and Let's Go, Rangers!

25 points for me! (even with a minus 9 on the 4th word) Guess distribution by tries 1,2,3,4,5,6,X (1,4,4,9,2,0,1) Had two words at the end where I am unsure which one goes in one of the categories and which one is on its own.

This was great

focus of an ellipse - for the math category

Finished with a net balance of +4 (I had one loss, on the difficult four-letter word, which cost me 9 points) Distribution as follows: 1: 0 2: 3 3: 2 4: 9 5: 6 6: 0 X: 1 (with one green and 3 gray I think)

wordles start at 7:54

As an American and a sports fan, this was fun to watch.

Rangers Sabres Sharks and Bruins are all Hockey teams. You were also right about Texas Rangers being a baseball team

We did this with our family of 6! We ignored the time limit, so it took about 2 hours, but we got 48, with 3 right on the first guess!

I really liked a series of puzzles like this, though I would prefer if the categories were all the same size.

20 pts. I had no idea what the words in 2 and 17 meant but I got #2 in 3 by brute force (and 17 in 5)

I did something like 18 points (not quite sure for my penalty on #4) but I got both #12 and #14 in one shot and #16 in 2. I’m quite happy to beat Mark as a non native English speaker :D (I used a dictionary to make it even)

No idea why I blanked on the 6 letter wordles very hard, just couldn't think of enough words and didn't have the time to sit around for it. Was fun to watch Mark blitz through it though! I too found the categories unhelpful, especially because you didn't know whether you'd finished one already or not. Plus the sports teams was just not something on my mind at all, haha!

Final Score, 15. I got quite a few of the math terms.

Focus is maths, it deals with conic sections like parabolas and ellipses

loved this!

I didn't use any categorical knowledge, just went straight to the description and played them all, noting how many guesses it took me. Got one of the 4 letters wrong and lost 9 points, so my final net score was a whopping: 0 pts. Got most of them in 3 or 4 (just like my wordle average), but got a few in 5.

I love these

That single, solitary moment where I felt like a real big brain for recognizing the category of NHL teams 🧠🧠🧠

focus is a math term, relating to the focus of an ellipse or parabola, for example

The part about the New York Rangers was funny :)

Thanks i liked the video. I still passionately hate wordle. On the 18/21 words i could access (links encoded fiax, eucrz and bctxd show a blank page to me for some reason) i scored a total of exactly 0. A couple points lost because of my impatience (trying a random fitting word and realizing a second later that one letter difference makes it much more likely to produce a categorized word) and i managed to score -7 on a 4 letter word and it wasn't the weird one :) I mostly stuck to hard mode, although on few occasions i missed breaking a yellow clue in subsequent guesses. I really hate the concept of playing and scoring wordle, i tried it because it felt like categories might improve it but the problems of wordle remain: on two of them i got a couple green letters and banged 20-40 "not a word according to us" guesses not affecting the score until i found the answer; it's extemely subjective to think what words are more likely to be correct or form a category (e.g. slot and a similar word are equally valid to me, both have enough connected short words to form a category but i have a sneaking suspicion one might be more likely); and a few of the actual words used might be known to english natives, usa locals or scrabble maniacs but extremely obscure to wider audience. Sometimes there are saving arguments like "popular crossword word, therefore not too obscure", i don't solve crosswords in english so i wouldn't know if this can be applied. Categories might improve the game but this wasn't it.

That was great!

Loved this video!

28...-3 on one of the 4 letters, -9 on one of the others. The 4 letter ones are brutal.

NHL teams, Boston Bruins, San Jose Sharks, Buffalo Sabres

I really love the idea of this, but he needs to make this game much more 'automatic'. Ie put it on hard mode, time each puzzle, do the scoring automatically. The game otherwise requires a lot of self regulation on the rules which is just too much I feel.

So, what did I think? Well, of course I tried the various wordles, and got a lot of them. But I missed one of the obscure ones altogether, and after a bit I actually gave up on my own because ... I don't know, maybe it has been a long day, and 21 wordles is so many more than one, or even the suite of cousins-of-wordle? The categories did make a difference rather than just having 21 unrelated words. And it was interesting to have 4- and 6-letter puzzles. I must say, I did not enjoy those; especially the four-letter ones, they should have had an extra guess since you get info about 20% fewer letters each time. BUT I did enjoy watching you solve, them, Mark. This less urgent pace of not trying to do anything in a minute or less was interesting; getting to hear your thinking more was interesting. Your reactions to a couple of the guesses (such as your deep surprise when you got ... oh, I'm not supposed to spoil it, so I won't say what word it was ...) were fun. I enjoyed that part of the video most of all. Thanks for doing these - I find them fun. But truthfully, not as fun as sudoku or the "in a minute" shorts or the family of Wordle-type puzzles that you did a few weeks (months?) ago.

I ended +18, was very happy with some of my guesses. Got a few in 2 tries once I had categories down. :)

I got 25 points. I got the 3rd in 2 guesses and the 14th in 1 guess. Overall it was a lot of fun.

Yay - I got 14 points. I feel kinda proud now. :D

There is indeed a team called the Texas Rangers, although that's not what the answer was referring to. The category was a different sport. Should there not be a point penalty when you forgot to stick to hard mode? 🙂 (I forgot a couple of times too.)

FOCUS of a parabola is point that all lines bounce to THINK Dish Network collecting dish

3 of the links didn't load, as for the rest - I got 9 points. But I'll point out the additional missing hints maybe could have helped a little?

My score was 9, I got 2 8 pointers, but also a -9 for not getting one at all. I didn't get one of the more American categories, I thought it was animals. And it did take me about an hour and a half, I wasn't going for speed.

I think i am an outlier, scoring system was kind enough to me. but again luck was largely at my side so, thats that. in fact i could have done better in 2 or 3 words. Distribution was as following: 1-0 2-3 3-9(hence the luck) 4-6 5-2 6-0 x-1(dreaded juju with one grey as i tried juku at last) Positive score of 26,happy enough.

Him not knowing NHL was frustrating me lol. The Texas rangers 😂

I've never played this game before, I really enjoyed it :) Very happy with my score of 18, largely thanks to a lucky first guess of 'drum'. Great video ❤

got it in 3 unfortunately. didn't get juju so -9 then got sabre in 2 since I started with stare.

Is the category Boston sports teams?

The teams are professional Hockey teams in the US. Interestingly, you opined that Ranger was Texas... There is in fact a professional baseball team call the Texas Rangers, based in Dallas, TX! But The New York Rangers are the hockey team that play in Madison Square Garden in NYC.

14, I had a hunch for the last 4-letter word

I got 21 because I put all my eggs in the categories basket. I'm definitely not a good Wordle player but I got two first try guesses because of this tactic

The Boston Bruins, San Jose Sharks, New York Rangers, and Buffalo Sabres are NHL teams

Can you put #1, #2, etc in front of each link in the description? Easier for us on mobile to find the next puzzle to click, or for anyone not just ctrl-clicking all of them at once.

got a +10. brutal!

For me 3 links (#10, #15 and #19) didn't load...+9 so far. Some of Mark's correct guesses were really out of left field!

Not all links seem to work..? the 6th and 7th for instance just brings me to an empty wordle-page, while the first few did work

NHL Ice Hockey Teams was Sabres, Sharks, Bruins

+3 at the end of the 21 wordles, now let's watch Mark obliterate my score!

My wife and I did it together and scored 18, and that was with a fail on word 4

*Spoilers* . . . . On the subject of team names . . . The Bruins are actually a college team (UCLA being the most well known, but also some smaller colleges and universities). The Texas Rangers are a sports team (major league baseball) as well as a part of both historic and current Texas law enforcement. But, of course, Bruins and Rangers (and Sabres and Sharks) are NHL teams. And, not related to team names, but focus is indeed a mathematics term, related mostly to parabolas but also other curves.

The four letter are brutal. Especially 1 category. I think 4letters they should only belong to 6 and 5 categories.

I got a grand total of 4 points. ( I couldn't do wordles 7, 9, 19, 20, and 21 because the links were broken, and I got spoiled for puzzle 15 when I skimmed over the comments :\ )

I enjoyed seeing Mark struggle