Buzz
If you’re still hooked on Wordle-inspired games (I personally can’t miss my daily Redactle session), you’ll want to check out Flagle. Despite its name sounding like an antifungal treatment, this game challenges you to guess flags—with a unique twist.
As usual, we’re referencing yesterday’s puzzle for this example, ensuring no spoilers for today’s challenge.
A Guide to Playing Flagle
Upon visiting the Flagle website, you’re greeted by an empty grid that will later display a flag. The grid consists of six blocks, each representing one of your six attempts—similar to the original Wordle, no hints are provided until after your first guess.
Your guesses must be selected from a predefined list of countries (preventing any spelling errors). Start typing a country’s name and choose it from the dropdown. Once you submit your guess, a portion of the flag will be unveiled. If you’re skilled with flags, you might crack the puzzle by your second attempt. (A first-guess win is purely luck-based.) You have six chances before the full flag and answer are displayed.
If you’re stuck, seek guidance
During my initial Flagle game, I couldn’t identify the flag fragment I was shown, leaving me feeling hopeless. However, each incorrect guess provides a hint: the distance and direction to the correct country from your guess.
For instance, in the example above, my first guess, Afghanistan, was incorrect. But I received a valuable clue: the correct country is 7,007 kilometers southwest of Afghanistan. (I overlooked this and guessed another random country; I later learned the mystery country is 7,146 kilometers northeast of Brazil.) Helpful tip: Earth’s circumference is roughly 40,000 kilometers, so a 10,000-kilometer difference means you’re about a quarter of the globe away.
If you’re skilled, you can deduce the answer using just your mental map. For those inclined to cheat, a real map is always an option. Once I paid attention to the distances and directions, I managed to narrow my search—without cheating(!)—to a region in central Africa, likely near the west coast. My final guess before exhausting my attempts was Cameroon; the correct answer turned out to be its neighbor, Gabon.
This offers two strategies to narrow down your options: flags and geography. And if you enjoy calculating distances and directions, you should also try Worldle. It starts by showing you the shape of a country, and then you must rely solely on geographical hints to solve the puzzle.
