British data scientist launches maths version of Wordle called Nerdle

A British data scientist has launched a numerical version of viral puzzle game Wordle after his 14-year-old daughter said she wished there was a version for ‘maths nerds’.

The game – created by Richard Mann, from London – has a similar concept to Wordle but instead of guessing letters, players guess numbers and mathematical symbols to create an equation.  

While it sounds very tricky, the arithmetic is usually simple and has got thousands of fans sharing their daily tries.

Richard, who also works as an AI investor, says he was driving home with his daughter Imogen when they were chatting about the Wordle craze and agreed there needed to  be an equivalent for maths fans. 

‘A few minutes later, we’d decided on the rules of the game and the name “nerdle”. 

‘As far as we can work out, there are over 100,000 valid words but we have chosen 17,723 valid ‘words’ as there are quite a lot we thought you wouldn’t like. 

‘We think it’s just as fun playing with numbers as playing with letters. See if you agree,’ he says on his website.

Just like Wordle, you can only play once a day. 

Fans have been quick to show off their prowess at the maths game, with many sharing their daily victories to Twitter.

‘When math teachers said that we’ll use what we learned in real life I didn’t think they meant Nerdle,’ said one.

‘I tried Nerdle for fun and I damn near died,’ joked another.

‘OK this is a lot harder than Wordle,’ said a third.  

‘Nerdle is much harder than Wordle and I’m never doing it again because it makes me feel dumb,’ one wrote.

However, some maths fans are loving the game, with one writing: ‘I’m better at Nerdle than I am at Wordle tbh.

‘I think I might like Nerdle better than Wordle,’ said another.

‘Ok I love Nerdle,’ commented another.

Fans have been quick to show off their prowess at the maths game, with many sharing their daily victories to Twitter

Writing in a LinkedIn post in January, Richard explained how after coming up with the idea with his daughter he figured out the rules of the game and played a few rounds with pen and paper. 

‘A fair few calculations later (this time my son takes the credit), we worked out that there are 17,723 valid “words” for our chosen 8-character calculation length. 

‘That sounded like a nice challenge and a couple of days later (thanks to my tech genius friend Marcus), www.nerdlegame.com was born on 22nd January’.

He added it’s been ‘absolutely fascinating’ watching the game go viral. 

For those struggling with Nerdle – Richard has also launched a mini version with only six columns

Richard has also revealed their working on new ideas including a 21 column version for the real maths nerds

‘Nerdle came about because I thought there must be a way to make a maths game that was as fun as Wordle is with letters. Playing with some traffic analytics data on top has been an added bonus!

‘Our morning routine at home now consists of a full round or Wordle and Nerdle before breakfast. If you haven’t tried them both, what are you waiting for?’ he added.

For those struggling with Nerdle – Richard has also launched a mini version with only six columns and has also revealed their working on new ideas including a 21 column version for the real maths nerds. 

Josh Wardle, who lives in Brooklyn and graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2006, created the game Wordle to play with partner Palak Shah earlier this year.

It’s since gone hugely viral leading to Josh to sell it to the New York Times for more than $1 million earlier this month.

Having first played the game with his girlfriend, he then shared it with his family on WhatsApp, where it proved so popular that he opened it up to the world. It now has more than 300,000 daily users.