What Is Otakle? The Anime Word Game, Explained
You thought Worlde was hard?! Oh boy!
2022 began with all of our Twitter feeds populated with our friends, professional acquaintances, and celebrity crushes posting their Wordle scores. Perhaps you, too, joined in on the fun, before the New York Times stepped in. Wordle’s success spawned a huge number of delightfully niche offshoots, including Chordle (four-note chords, as in music), BRDL (birds), and Poeltl (NBA players). There’s even Heardle for musical intros. Now, the inevitable has finally arrived: a Wordle spin-off for Otaku.
Enter Otakle, where you must guess the name of the anime or video game character in six tries. Of course, you’re limited to character names that only have five letters. Honestly, it’s surprising how many of those exist: the examples are “Armin,” “Misty,” and “Zelda.” You can start brainstorming from there: “Brock,” “Hange,” “Bojji,” “Luffy,” “Robin,” “Mario”…I’m not going to give you that many answers!
Starting to guess some characters is easy enough, but I found that once a letter or two begins to restrict my guesses, Otakle becomes hard. Much harder than Worlde, in my opinion. Because, of course, the answer could be from a series or game you’ve never seen. This isn’t a judgment on your worth as an Otaku, at least in my eyes. I write about anime for a living, and the only Otakle I’ve won so far was a freak accident. I didn’t even know the character. It’s hard. Then again, my brain starts freezing up and panicking during Wordle, too. Which is why I stopped playing Wordle.
Like Wordle, a new Otakle is available every day. At present, there’s also an archive of nearly 80 puzzles to go back and solve. I still have to figure out my best starting words, but it will probably always be a One Piece character out of principle. Beppo, Brook, Kuzan…
(Image credit: Anime Japan)
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