Wuzzled! is designed by Tabbassum Qumer. Publishers Iconiq Studios describe it as 'Wordle meets Battleships' but we prefer to think of Wuzzled! as competitive Wordle, where, through a series of guesses, you're trying to deduce a hidden word.
The 2-4 players decide at the start whether they are playing with three, four, five or six-letter words. You might play with three- and four-letter words in a game with younger children but we'd otherwise recommend the Wordle standard five-letter words or stretching to six. Players each select the letter tiles they need to spell their word and they secrete the letters behind rather than on their tile rack.
When everyone has their word in place, players simultaneously write on a sheet their guess at another player's word. In a two-player head-to-head, you're obviously just guessing at the other player's word but with three or four players you need to indicate not just your guess but also the player at which you are targeting the guess. As in Wordle, the 'guesses' must always be words.
Players then respond to guesses directed at them. If a letter in the guess word is in the targeted player's word in the same position, the targeted player takes the letter from behind the rack and places it on the rack in that same position. Letters in the word but in the wrong position are marked with a yellow counter on an alphabet grid. Letters in the guess word that aren't in the target word at all are marked on the alphabet grid with a red counter. That may just sound more complicated than it really is because one of the key attractions of Wuzzled! is that the rules are almost intuitively easy to assimilate.
Some of the trickiest Wordles are those that use the same letter more than once, and that can be true too in Wuzzled! If I choose STRESS as my word and my opponent's 'guess' word is SPEEDY, they may be pleased to have found two of the six letters spot on but they might well ignore the possibility that the word might contain more Ss... Another tactic might be to choose a word with low frequency letters, tho' your opponent(s) might just guess that that's just the sort of thing you'd do...
If you're playing with three or four players then there may be tactical decisions to make in your choice over who to target. And of course the information you gain from the target player's response will be helping other players as much as you, and the win goes to the player with the last still undeduced word... Be warned too that some players may find it befuddling keeping track of multiple grids. It's good that there are the components (racks and alphabet grids) to give the option to include up to four players but, from our plays at Board's Eye View we much prefer Wuzzled! as a straightforward two-player head-to-head. If you're looking for a Christmas gift for someone who enjoys their daily New York Times Wordle challenge then Wuzzled! is the perfect choice.