I made a promise to myself that I would not write about Wordle today. I didn’t care how clever or cute the twist was on the theme. Then I found Spirdle which is a Wordle-like game of guessing about Pokemon.
What is Squirdle?
Pokemon’s world is almost encyclopedic, almost like a dictionary in its depth and breadth. Squirdle makes use of the fact that Wordle has a similar number of 5-letter words to Pokemon (898, counting). It’s also possible to create a fun little Pokemon-guessing game from it.
How to play Squirdle
Squirdle, despite being a fun and lively Pokemon-themed game is not recommended for casual fans. The game’s rules are confusing and requires that you know a lot about the creatures and their different features, such as their heights, weights and generations. It’s not as simple as it sounds but equally enjoyable. It’s more fun to be able to correctly guess the answer, the harder the game.
Squirdle can help you with your guessing. You don’t even have to enter exact spellings of the Pokemons you want. You can select from a list of possible Pokemons by simply entering a few letters. This is especially helpful for those who are new to Pokemon, but still have a passion for it.
Squirting
Squirdle offers 8 chances to identify the Pokemon and capture its essence. Your attempts must be valid names for Pokemons. These can also be any number of letters.
After visiting Squirdle, you can start guessing as soon as you choose the game mode you want.
Click on the “Pokemon Name” text area to begin typing. A drop-down menu will appear with relevant Pokemon names.
Sergio Morales Esquivel (Fireblend’s creator) could have chosen a simple route and simply picked six-letter Pokemon, then copied-pasted the rest of his code. Squirdleis, however, a more difficult game that requires decent knowledge of pocket monsters to be enjoyed well.
The game allows you to guess at all 898 beasties. (The list does not include regional variants or mega-evolved forms. It takes only eight turns to complete the task. This clearly means that you need specialist feedback in order to get started with the whittling process. The game offers five feedback points: Type 1, Type 2, Height and Weight. If you guess correctly, the game will give you a green box. If they are wrong, a red or a yellow. It will tell you whether you should guess higher or lower when it comes down to the latter two.
It’s confusing, yes, but it’s the type of information that is confusing. If you choose a Ground type and you get the correct answer, you will receive a yellow block and a red one.
Squirdle Daily
This is a great way to approach things. I am too new to the Pokemon world to be able to tell which Pokemon are from which generation. Despite a year and a half of intense Pokemon Go playing, I still struggle to remember which ones are which. (I don’t actually PvP. However, I can still use the information to guide me and be more driven by my height and weight. Your greater knowledge will make the game more fun for you, an entirely different class of human being.
A Daily version is available, such as Wordle. This gives the world one Pokemon every 24 hours. You can also play as many times as you want, the game randomly picking monsters. For the old fogeys, you can limit it to Gen 1.
I’m cheating just like I am Globle but this time I have Bulbapedia open and not Google Maps. Because I’m not sure which Pokemon are exactly the same height as Meowth, it’s a shame. It’s amazing that I know enough Pokemon names to be able start playing, considering I wouldn’t have been able to spell Pikachu before the pandemic.
It can be quite satisfying. It was a difficult task to find another Pokemon with a secondary Fire type from Gen 3 or whatever.
It doesn’t require exact spelling, rather pulling up a list of possible spellings as you type and letting you choose the one that you want. It’s a nice touch.
You know what? Screw Grumpy Commenter Who Obligates To Read Every Post Even Though he Knows He Isn’t Interested From the Headline – I hope more and more of these Wordlealikes continue popping up because they’re having so much fun!
Squirdle Hints
Wordle and Squirdle are different in that the feedback (hints), relate to information about the Pokemon (the solution) rather than the position of letters in your guesses.
Each guess will result in a set 5 of the same color-coded tiles. These tiles indicate the type, generation, height and weight of each Pokemon. Green means you were right, i.e. The indicator for that tile is the same as the one you used to guess the answer. A blue tile with a white arrow indicates that the answer is either one more (upwards or downwards) in value.
