[imagesource: Vincent van Gogh, “Self-Portrait” 1889 / Collection of Mr and Mrs John Hay Whitney]

If things like brush strokes and sfumato get you off, then you’ll be grateful to learn about ‘Artle‘.

It’s the newest take on Wordle, that guessing word game that took the world by storm before a kindly husband sold his idea to The New York Times for a cool seven figures.

If you’re unfamiliar with the five-letter allotment per day, head here for some light dabbling.

As Forbes so wordily notes, the game has “spawned a panoply of copycats” including Worldle for geography lovers and Lewdle for folks who enjoy a naughty turn of phrase.

We have yet to even explore the various other versions, like Heardle (all about music), Nerdle (full of math), and Queerdle (piled with LGBTQ+ words).

There are so many, it’s all getting a little Absurdle (that one speaks for itself).

The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington D.C. has done a clever thing by jumping on this word game bandwagon and inspiring art lovers to explore its art collection in a new way:

A daily guessing game for art lovers? Dreams do come true. 🎨🟥🟩⬜️⬜️

Put your art history knowledge to the test in a new game created by the National Gallery: #Artle ➡️ https://t.co/xs5haB5Ibb pic.twitter.com/gIvZ1mN25U

— National Gallery of Art (@ngadc) May 9, 2022

Every day, Artle gives players an opportunity to identify the creator of four works of art in four guesses:

The player gets a chance to guess the artist. If incorrect, the game displays a second work of art by the same artist, and so on until four works by the same artist have been revealed.

If the player does not guess the artist correctly after four attempts, the name is revealed.

Each work is a part of the gallery’s 155 000 works by 15 000 artists, allowing folks to explore the NGA’s treasure trove of paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, decorative arts, and more.

Once the artist’s name is revealed, the player can click through to learn more about the artist and their work.

Nifty.

[source:forbes]