People are now sharing their Wordle achievements as a golf score

April 6, 2022

Wordle lovers needed a way to compare their scores against other people – and golf came to the rescue.

The Wordle phenomenon doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. The daily word quiz app based on old pencil and paper games and created by Welsh engineer Josh Wardle, went viral in late 2021 – and was bought out by the New York Times Company for an undisclosed 7-figure sum in January 2022.

And with good reason. It’s a fun web-based app that at least requires people to use some part of their brain for a short period of time each day.

Two major issues emerged.

Many Wordle enthusiasts have a hard time keeping their achievements to themselves. The ability to quickly share the result of the daily quiz is perfect for feeding Wordle’s popularity but has led to the rise of a couple of competing parody sites – Letterle for example – designed to poke fun at Wordle-ists.

The other one is no official scoring system.

And so someone began rating their Wordle achievement using golf parlance. Specifically, each Wordle is assigned as a par-4. Solving the puzzle in four guesses would be a par, three guesses a birdie, two guesses an eagle, and so on.

Of course, it wasn’t enough for many Wordle lovers to just post their score with respect to par, but several people began to describe their “hole” in greater detail.

https://twitter.com/therealmonkster/status/1507830395806511105

Former Wallaby and writer Peter Fitzsimon’s has been the most prominent Twitterer to take up the golf speak when sharing his daily Wordle score and has begun an unofficial golf tournament.

While not the first to do so, Fitzsimon’s called for 18 days of Wordle beginning April 1 to signify 18 holes of golf. All scores will be collated at the end of the “round” with a prize for the winner.

Will this do anything to get more people interested in golf? Probably not. But it’s a load of fun all the same.

I really think they should have used Stableford scoring. Once you’ve made six guesses, just pick your ball up and walk to the next hole.

Here's the deal, Derryn. Starting 1 April, we two – and everyone who wants to join us, like @Cornesy12
– can start an 18 hole tournament of Wordle at the #FitzWGC #Wordle Golf Club. Every day we post our score for the hole, and collective total. Winner announced on 18 April! https://t.co/Jm6tvOvqlr

— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) March 22, 2022

We need a Wordle golf tournament. 18 days, every word is a Par 4. Have majors and shit during those respective months

— Bryant (@redsoxfan426) January 27, 2022

I've been recruited to a new groupchat called Wordle Beach: an 18 day Wordle-golf tournament. Par is 4 every day. So far I'm at -1 through the first two days. @blumenfeld I feel like you'd appreciate this level of investment.

— brent (@brentmackinnon) February 2, 2022

Between 2/1 and 2/18, my buddies and I did a wordle golf tournament in which we tracked our scores each day in the spirit of scratching an unending itch of meaningless competition. After complaints that the words became more difficult after the NYT, I decided to investigate:

1/ pic.twitter.com/eOz5Bg7lzV

— Evan Lu (@Evanlu11) February 24, 2022

My brother is doing a Wordle Golf tournament with his friends.
Every day you play Wordle, they enter their score. (They are doing a group excel sheet.)
Each day is a par 4, and they'll keep track of the daily leaders as the days pass. Lowest score after 9 days wins!

— Helen Anne Ledwith (@HelenAnne27) January 29, 2022

https://twitter.com/jboydcpa/status/1507848655922864133

No matter. I repeat. Today was just the last warm-up round. Tomorrow the Wordle Golf comp begins.#FitzWGC
All welcome, Hard and Easy, though we consider Easy the amateurs.
Tee-off from midnight.
Register daily and running scores for 18 days.
Global winner, 19 April.#Wordle https://t.co/NByoaZEsUO

— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) March 30, 2022

https://twitter.com/Cornesy12/status/1509988794204049408

To compete, you have to give us your running total since 1 April, to see where you are on the leader board!#FitzWGC https://t.co/LJ3xSCGK2r

— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) April 4, 2022