What Is Cloudle? The Weather Wordle Game Explained

Cloudle is a daily weather-guessing game — a Wordle spin-off created by Rob Ousbey in which players guess the five-day weather forecast for a random city around the world. Instead of typing letters, you fill a grid with weather icons — sunny, cloudy, rain, snow and more — and get the familiar green, yellow, and grey feedback across six tries. Here is the complete guide to how it works and how to win.

What Is Cloudle?

Cloudle is a daily weather-forecast guessing game that was created in 2022 by Rob Ousbey. The game challenges players to guess the weekly weather forecast for cities around the globe, with the forecast centred on cloud conditions like Clear, Rain, and Snow. Cloudle was inspired by Wordle, the hit word-guessing game created by Josh Wardle (progameguides.com).

The concept is disarmingly simple: it is Wordle, but with weather. Each day you are given a random city somewhere in the world, and instead of entering letters, you select weather symbols to fill out a grid — trying to predict the forecast for the next five days. In the usual Wordle way, the game tells you if a symbol does not appear in the forecast at all, if it appears but in the wrong position, or if you have it exactly right, and you get six guesses for the day's puzzle (rockpapershotgun.com).

As Rock Paper Shotgun put it at launch: "For if your meteorology is better than your vocabulary." People who religiously watch the forecast have a clear advantage — but the game is not random even if you do not. It rewards thinking about geography, climate, and the season (rockpapershotgun.com). See how Wordle's creator branched into cryptic crosswords with Parseword, or the tile-sliding craze in What Is Clickword?.

How to Play Cloudle: The Rules

Cloudle is easy to pick up, especially if you already know Wordle. The rules, as described across the major gaming press (progameguides.com; pcgamer.com):

1. Get the day's city. Each day a new random city is selected, and your job is to predict its five-day weather forecast.
2. Fill the grid with weather icons. Instead of letters, you choose from weather conditions — sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, overcast, drizzle, thunderstorm, misty, and scattered clouds (nine possible icons on the main version) (wordlewordle.io).
3. Submit and read the colours. After each guess, icons turn green for the right icon in the right day's slot, yellow for the right icon in the wrong position, and grey when the icon does not appear in that day's forecast at all (progameguides.com).
4. You get six chances. Just like Wordle, you have six guesses to get the five-day forecast exactly right (pcgamer.com).
5. A new city every day. The puzzle refreshes daily, so everyone is forecasting the same city on the same day.

The feedback colours at a glance

• Green — correct weather icon in the correct day slot. Locked in.
• Yellow — the icon appears in the forecast, but on a different day. Reposition it.
• Grey — the icon does not appear in the five-day forecast at all. Eliminate it.

Cloudle vs Wordle vs Worldle

Cloudle sits in a family of location-flavoured daily games. Here is how it compares:

If you like Cloudle, Worldle — where you guess a country from its silhouette — is the natural next stop (pcgamer.com). For word-based daily deduction instead, try the original daily word challenge at Plusword.

Strategies to Win at Cloudle

This meteorology quiz looks like luck, but educated guessing beats random clicking every time. These tactics draw on how the game actually plays (rockpapershotgun.com; pcgamer.com):

1. Start with the obvious for that city

Your first guess should reflect the city's climate, not a spread of icons. Got a desert city like Giza, Egypt? Open with five days of sunshine — even if it is not perfect, the greens and greys immediately tell you how dominant that pattern is. Rock Paper Shotgun's launch-day solve for Giza worked exactly this way (rockpapershotgun.com).

2. Use geography as your cheat sheet

Seattle, Washington or Copenhagen, Denmark in winter? Rain is a strong bet about half the time. Las Vegas, Nevada and Perth, Australia? You can practically rule out snow. If your own city ever comes up, you have a real leg up (pcgamer.com).

3. Think in seasons

Cloudle strategies naturally shift through the year as weather changes around the globe. A city that is all sun in July may be all rain in January — always check which hemisphere and season you are forecasting for before committing (pcgamer.com).

4. Respect the yellow reposition

Yellow icons are pure information: that weather happens during the five days, just not where you put it. Like Wordle's yellow letters, your next guess should move the icon to an untested day rather than dropping it.

5. Narrow with elimination

Grey icons are eliminated entirely. With only nine possible conditions, two or three grey results can cut the possibility space dramatically — spend your middle guesses testing untested icons rather than reshuffling confirmed ones.

6. Look up the climate if you are stuck

There is no shame in checking a city's historical weather data to inform your predictions. Cloudle is a knowledge game as much as a guessing game, and learning something about world climates is half the fun (foodlewordle.io).

Where to Play Cloudle

Cloudle is free to play in the browser. The original game was built by Rob Ousbey — released on April Fool's Day 2022 — and the concept has since been picked up by several fan versions (rockpapershotgun.com; pcgamer.com):

• The original concept (cogit.fun/cloudle). Rob Ousbey's launch version, covered by PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun at release (pcgamer.com).
• Fan versions on Wordle-clone sites. Several Wordle-variant hubs now host their own Cloudle editions with the same six-guess, five-day format — search results list versions on rankdle.io, sedecordle.io, and foodlewordle.io, all free in the browser.

All versions are free, need no sign-up, and run on desktop and mobile browsers.