Every time I clicked “next” I felt a rush: the roll of the dice, the spinning of the spinner. What incredible and horrible array of distorted images would the internet spit out at me next? And, more importantly, would I be able to guess the exact recipe that created such monsters? Could I, once again, beat artificial intelligence at its stupid little game?

I’ll admit that “meatball soldier” was a challenge when I couldn’t help but see nuts and brains in the Rorschach-esque test in front of me. And that “tax-making cage” felt out of left field. But, at the time of writing this, Wordalle hasn’t fazed me yet. The open-source program combines the unfettered joy of the DALL-E Mini bonkers AI-generated images with the more sedate pleasures of a thoughtful tower of Wordle. It asks users to guess the original prompt passed to an AI that generated a series of nonsensical images. The result is irresistible.

“Spoilers! you might shout, except that Wordalle works with an almost infinite resource. There are no spoilers here. You certainly won’t be faced with the same sets of images as I am, and if somehow you are, you can just “move on”. Unlike the original daily Wordle, there is always more Wordalle.

Another difference from the source of inspiration: the words you submit as part of a guessed phrase don’t have to be “real” according to a dictionary definition. Because DALL-E Mini allows prompts consisting of letters in any combination, so does Wordalle. (Ex: my enlightened “babyy yoda” submission below).

However, everything else in the game is pretty intuitive if you’ve played Wordle or any of the his relatives before. Green means good, yellow means somehow, gray means try again.

An added bonus from Wordalle: the AI-infused word game does not track your personal data, according to a disclaimer on the site: “This demo collects guesses to help with a research project. The demo does not store any personal data , such as your IP address, your email address or your account, only your guesses. In contrast, Wordle (acquired by the New York Times in January) now monetizes as much user data as possible.

For now, Wordalle is untouched by the relentless pursuit of profit that seemingly dictates everything else in our world. It’s an innocent pastime in a broken internet. It’s the perfect way to spend your Friday afternoon minutes before the weekend. One more lap couldn’t hurt.