Forget Wordle, The Password Game is my new word-game obsession

“What is the current phase of the moon?” My immediate reaction is to look outside my window and, unsurprisingly, realize it’s daylight. I won’t be earning my deerstalker anytime soon.

I instead rely on a quick Google to find the solution: Waxing Gibbous. Whatever that means. I then Google what the emoji for that moon phase is and add it to the gibberish I’ve already typed out in an attempt to beat The Password Game.

The premise of The Password Game is simple. All you have to do is “choose” a password that follows a set of rules. While setting normal passwords for things like logins can be a bit frustrating, requiring you to add a special character or number, this password’s requirements are much more bizarre—and considerably more infuriating.

So far, I’ve been asked to include the name of a country I had to identify from only a Google Street image, include a two-letter symbol from the periodic table, and include Roman numerals that specifically multiply to equal 35. These rules may have been odd, but mostly I was able to follow them simply by using my own knowledge—or, let’s be honest, just by guessing.

As you go on, the rules become more complicated, however. One of the rules shows you a chessboard and asks you the best move in algebraic chess notation for the current situation while another wants the URL of a YouTube video that’s specifically 28 minutes and 16 seconds long. And they get even more outlandish from there—I won’t spoil exactly how.

What seem to be easy questions become difficult as previous rules you have followed may prevent you from following other rules. For example, by adding a CAPTCHA consisting of numbers and letters that was required for one rule, a previous rule I had followed to have all the numbers in my password add up to 25 was no longer being followed. So the password needed to be tweaked, without breaking any of the other rules.

As a result, I’ve been frantically searching all over the internet for answers to the rules, Googling Buddhist countries, chess notations, and moon phases in an attempt to beat a game that has me wanting to throw my computer screen into the street. Every time I think I’ve nailed one rule, another answer invalidates it. I’ve never felt so stupid, but so driven. It’s a treasure hunt across the internet to rival Indiana Jones. Well, if Indiana Jones was sitting at his PC Googling chess positions.

While Wordle may still be holding the attention of many, I found myself avidly playing for a couple of weeks and then giving up due to the repetitiveness of the game. I don’t expect I’ll be playing The Password Game for weeks to come, but it’s certainly a bizarre breath of fresh air that, at least for now, has me hooked.