Apparently, no one has grown tired of word games yet, which is OK with us. We love Wordle and all of its creative spin-off games. Periodle is the newest variety to join the fray, and we're crossing our fingers that we remember that semester of Chemistry we studied freshman year.

 

Periodle requires players to spell out words using shortened elements from the periodic table rather than the standard alphabet. For those of us who don't know that, the game includes the whole beast exactly where the "normal" keyboard would be in Wordle and some of its derivatives, such as Waffle Game and Quordle.

 

Otherwise, the game functions similarly to the others. You have one word to predict that will be spelled from any five components on the table, and you only have a limited amount of guesses (eight for this one, instead of Wordle's six). It also adheres to the color rule of indicating which letters (components) are in the proper location, which are in the word but in the incorrect place, and which do not occur at all in that day's word.

 

However, since certain basic abbreviations are two letters (rather than one), any one day's puzzle answer might comprise anywhere from five to 10 letters overall. While Wordle has helped most of us become more comfortable with probable five-letter words, we'll need to brush up on larger ones now.

Periodle further increases the challenge by introducing a new mechanic—orange letters. When an element is highlighted orange, it implies that it is included in the solution word but does not appear in the solution itself. The initial guess, "Piracy," and the guessed elements—"P," "I," and "Ra"—all include letters in the answer word, as seen in the figure below. However, those precise aspects are ultimately erroneous since the answer is "Practical."