Hot off the heels of Wordle, a new online game called 'Heardle' is making the rounds as the latest viral app of 2022. Despite being just a few short months into the year, 2022 has already given us tons of trendy apps and games. Locket Widget exploded as a fun way to share photos on friends' iPhone home screens, Prequel lets users turn themselves into cartoon drawings, and Spam App is trying to be a stress-free alternative to Instagram and Snapchat.
More so than anything else, however, Wordle has been the go-to app of the year. While the game itself is simple enough, there's no denying the sheer popularity of Wordle. It's amassed millions of players, was sold to The New York Times for over $1 million, and has spawned countless copycat apps trying to mimic its success. Some of these Wordle imitators are shameless ripoffs. Others, like Byrdle, use the same Wordle formula but with a unique twist.
Such is the case with the new Heardle app. Released a few months after Wordle, Heardle has the same basic foundation. Players are given a new thing to guess every day and have six chances to do so. However, instead of guessing words, Heardle players try to guess the title and artist of a song after listening to a short preview of it. Heardle's creators are open and proud about the Worlde inspiration, saying on its website that Heardle is "A respectful homage to Wordle, with a musical twist."
How To Play Heardle
So, how does Heardle work? After heading to the Heardle website, turn up your device's volume and then click the play button towards the bottom of the screen. Heardle initially plays just the first second of a song. You can make a guess if you think you know it or click the 'Skip' button. Each time you click Skip or make an incorrect guess, Heardle plays more of the song the next time you click the play button. Each subsequent incorrect guess/skip unlocks more of the song. The first skip adds another second, the second skip adds another 2 seconds, etc. Continuing to click Skip eventually unlocks the first 16 seconds of the song for your sixth and last guess Just like Wordle, the goal is to guess the song in as few attempts as possible.
After successfully guessing the day's Heardle (or failing to do so), it shows a Soundcloud link to the full song and displays a 'Share' button. Once again taking inspiration from Wordle, sharing your Heardle score uses emoji boxes to show how many guesses it took you to get it right. There are a few other icons available at the top of the Heardle site. The 'ⓘ' icon offers a brief description of the game, the heart icon lets you donate to Heardle's creators, the graph icon shows your current stats, and the '?' icon explains how to play.
And that's all there is to Heardle! If you enjoy the concept of Wordle but are more of a music fan than a word one, Heardle is absolutely worth checking out. It's 100 percent free to use and available on any device with a web browser. Just go to 'heardle.app' on your phone/tablet/computer, start playing, and check it out every day for a new daily Heardle to guess.
Source: Heardle