Wordle is a puzzle. BLUFF is a bet. Both mark guesses with green, amber and grey tiles, and if you can play one you can play the other in about thirty seconds. Everything after that is different.
| Wordle | BLUFF | |
|---|---|---|
| Who chose the word | An editor, in advance | Another player, to beat you |
| Word length | Always five letters | Four, five or six, mixed in one match |
| What you are given | Six guesses, no clue | One clue, then a decision |
| The core decision | Which word to guess | Whether to play the hand at all |
| Cost of a bad puzzle | Bad luck | Your own call |
| Players per game | One | Six, and the deal rotates |
| How long | Three or four minutes | About five, for six hands |
| Sharing | A grid of squares | A hand-by-hand strip, and a record |
| Cost | Free to play | Free, with optional star packs |
| Prizes | None | None — the daily pays in-game stars |
In Wordle, a hard word is bad luck. Nobody chose it for you and there is no decision to regret. In BLUFF, the word in front of you was chosen by somebody who wanted your stars, and the clue was chosen to look more generous than it is. Every hand starts with a question a puzzle cannot ask: is this worth paying for?
Folding is a move. It costs you the ante and nothing else, and if the table plays the hand and nobody cracks it, your laydown scores — the daily board credits being right to refuse. That single rule is why good BLUFF players are not the ones with the biggest vocabulary. They are the ones who can look at a clue and say no.
Wordle is always five letters. In BLUFF a word can be four, five or six, and the lengths are mixed inside a single match, so you never know which is coming. Four-letter words are cracked about a third of the time and six-letter words about two thirds: a shorter word hides less, but it also gives a guess less to grip. The length of a hand is a read before you have even seen the clue — and a setter who deals you a four is telling you something about how much they want to be paid.
The marking is identical: green for a letter in the right place, amber for a letter in the word but somewhere else, grey for a letter that is not there, with doubled letters handled the same way Wordle handles them, one row at a time. BLUFF adds a shape to every tile as well — a filled dot, a hollow diamond, a slash — so the clue never depends on colour vision. If you have played Wordle you already know this part.
BLUFF is free to download and the daily is free forever. Stars are an in-game score you win at the table and can also buy; they are your stake and they buy your table’s looks, and they never leave the game. There is one advert, a video you can choose to watch when you have run out. An account is optional. The top three on the daily take stars, an in-game score that buys cosmetic looks and cannot be bought or cashed out. It is suitable for all ages.
Most people do. Wordle is a coffee-break puzzle; BLUFF is a table you sit down at. BLUFF's daily takes about five minutes and, like Wordle, gives every player in the world the identical problem — the same six deals until midnight UTC — so the board ranks decisions rather than luck.