Absurdle

In this Death Match, players deduce the round's rule by guessing five-letter words with the ultimate goal of creating three color patterns faster than their opponent.

Designer(s): ItzShaun Match Type: DM (for 2 players)
Featured in: Community Hosted Genius Game 3
Awards: Best Misc DM 2023, Most Fun DM 2023

Your 11th Death Match is...

Absurdle





In Absurdle, players guess five-letter words to create three color patterns faster than their opponent.





Absurdle is played over a maximum of 11 rounds, although fewer could be played.

Before each round, players are shown six ‘patterns’. A pattern is a sequence of five colored spaces; each space being either Black, Green, or Yellow. These six patterns are to be evenly distributed between both players.





In the first round, the player who placed second in the Main Match gets the first pick on which pattern to receive. Players then alternate picking from the remaining patterns until both players have claimed three.

In subsequent rounds, the player who lost the previous round picks first.





The round begins after patterns are distributed. Every 45 seconds, players must privately guess a valid 5-letter word in their submissions channel.

Only the first valid submission will be accepted.


A 5-letter word is considered valid if it appears in the Collins Scrabble Dictionary. Players are permitted to use the official checker provided during the Death Match — linked here: https://scrabble.collinsdictionary.com/check/

As a rule of thumb, the CSD does not include hyphenated words, capitalized words (like proper nouns), abbreviations, and a few more modern words. Especially words created after August 31, 2023.





Both players’ guesses are added to the board in separate columns seen below. The columns display a player’s guesses in chronological order. Only the six most recent guesses are shown.





When guesses are revealed, some letters may be marked as Yellow or Green instead of Black.

The conditions that highlight cells Yellow, Green, or Black are different in every round. Players are not informed of these conditions and must determine them themselves during each round.





If the highlighted cells of a player’s guess exactly match a pattern they claimed at the start of the round, the guess will be hidden but the cell’s colors are still revealed.

The corresponding pattern is then crossed off.





The player who crosses off their patterns using fewer guesses than their opponent wins the round.


As an additional rule, if a player guesses a word that has been guessed before by either player, two guesses are added to their total.





Here, I have provided an example ruleset.

The condition for Yellow is: “The letter appears in the word ‘HORSE’.”

The condition for Green is: “The letter appears in the word ‘HORSE’ and is in the correct position for that letter. This overrides Yellow highlights.”





The first player to win 6 rounds moves on to Episode 12 and becomes a finalist. Their opponent is eliminated from Community Hosted Genius Game 3.





This Death Match is based on the Wordle variant ‘Obscurdle’ created by Henry Truong. You can play Obscurdle here: https://obscurdle.com/

None of Absurdle’s rulesets match ones found in the game.




Absurdle Summary

  1. Players distribute three patterns between one another.
  2. Every 45 seconds, players guess valid 5-letter words. The letters of this word will turn either Black, Yellow, or Green.
  3. The player who guesses a word that matches their own pattern crosses that pattern off.
  4. The first player to cross off their three patterns wins the round. The first player to win 6 rounds moves onto the finals.

Clarifications and Extra Info

  • If both players take the same amount of guesses in a round, the player who crossed off their second pattern faster wins. If there is still a tie, the player who crossed off their first pattern faster wins. If there is still a tie, the loser of the previous round wins.
  • If a player fails to submit or submits an invalid word, their guess will not be processed but will still count toward that player’s score.
  • If an odd number of rounds are forfeited/tossed/etc. and players win an equal number of rounds, a 12th backup round will be played.

Tags

Mental    (The game tests mental agility.)

Points-based    (The game involves players earning points.)

Puzzle    (The game tests the players' abilities to solve puzzles.)

Words    (The game tests the players' linguistic abilities.)