Welcome to the Wheedle challenge page!

What challenge? Well, in March 2022 there was a FaceBook call-out for Wordle-ophile poets. 

Lots replied. Many were already tackling Wordle, Wordle 2, Quordle, and even Nerdle on a daily basis.

But they hadn’t yet tried ... Wheedle. Those people are the Wheedle pilot group.

They read the Wheedle rules on Eddie Gibbons’ website. (In fact, this whole idea germinated in the head of E. Gibbons.)

Then, over three days, they wheedled. The results are on this page, most recent first.

All end with the winning word, but they take many routes to get there. 

If you’d like to take a crack at this yourself, go ahead.

Share on Twitter or FaceBook, using hashtag #wheedlexxx (xxx = number of corresponding Wordle) and/or just #wheedle to join the throng.

Wheedles day 3: 27 March, 2022

TWODLES

*
There weren’t any! This tells you something.

THREEDLES (HAIKUDLES)

*
She advertised rates
for carvings in ebony
(she used epoxy).

Carl Tomlinson

*
Bidding trees adieu
Scarcity of wood, resin’s epoch
Discovery of epoxy. 

Hema

*
First I went for ‘taxed’.
‘X’ and ‘E’ yellow ... so ... ‘exile’?
Nope. It’s ‘epoxy’!

E. T. Michie

*
Heat or eat needs coins
Today’s cost of living trope
Broke! Send epoxy

Nancy Somerville

*
Pavarotti’s voice,
his Nessun Dorma, enjoy,
strong as epoxy.

Brenda Conn

*
all through the party
I really was that soppy –
stuck like epoxy

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin

FOURDLES

*
I must be thick as the proverbial brick,
my grey cells an iota short of quota.
I do not love thee,Wordle. Thou canst shove
thy slipshod orthodoxy. What! – Epoxy?

Ann Drysdale

*
The sign said ‘Proceed with a cautious tread
speed will evince a fall, cause you to wince’.
The layout was novel, with hills, a stone hovel,
a fleet of boxy cars made from resin epoxy.

Elisabeth Sennitt Clough

*
Naming your mite is a fright to get right
the options confound, abound in a mound:
would Rose cause woes only therapy could dis-close?
Will Roxy be unorthodox-y or cohere, like epoxy?

Nikki Robson

*
It was a lot to pay for a yacht.
All in the priory grew fiery.
The fishpond boy was forced to enjoy
patching his poxy coracle with epoxy.

Robbie Burton

*
A fixer-upper seemed a lark but turned out stark:
there was nothing novel about living in a hovel!
When all they did was moan I got on the phone – 
found someone to act as a proxy and bodge it with epoxy.

Mike Farren

*
Do not ape this talk of grape,
be falsely proud of terroir and cloud.
Instead savour honey, laugh, admire the peony
Be present not proxy, let love be your epoxy.

Claire Urquhart 

*
My life’s bane is my brain
cliché floats aside a trite quote
I lose, sanity slips like flat shoes
my moxie acts as a proxy for epoxy.

Jo Gilbert

*
Whenever I dies, rest assured I will arise
for always the boy will make a fit decoy.
While you get funny with your gooey honey,
I’ll fix me to my doxy with some fishy epoxy.

Richard Skinner

*
No love boat, no cash float,
no top drawer, no offshore,
(my heart-string’s a low G). No love heart emoji,
no stand-in, no proxy. We stick, like epoxy. 

Jayne Stanton

QUINDLES

*
Sometimes in a queer dream,
when slumber’s my only sense,
I elect you leave, evict
snoring you with my elbow,
but you’re sticky, like epoxy.

Jill Munro

*
Pick me, precious prickly petal!
You perverse pickle, vixeny viper,
quick - climb into my coupé,
prink up. Our road opens,
epic, foxy, flying from epoxy.

Natalie Shaw

*
When cold water creates steam,
when bloodless bodies are gored,
when quarrelling couples must elope –
blame this barmy post-truth epoch
and apply tenacious twaddle epoxy.

Clare Best

*
He got my poem ‘Sutra’
quite, quite, quite, quite wrong.
Now all his Twitter flock
think I’m a dim diode
and my poem is (e)poxy

Eddie Gibbons

*
He heard
She saw the fume, the plume
Quite spoiled, we spent
Ages, aeons, an epoch
Mixing that epoxy

Donald Spy

CRAPSEY CINQUAIN

*
I meant
to show my poise
through DIY. Decoy
deployed but the glue was ropey,
(e)poxy.

Andy Jackson

*

Punk quiff like a crest,
dab hand with a blade,
she can’t spare a penny.
Her spell in the pokey
sticks to her like epoxy.

Hilary Menos

*
Abruptly, you answered me — Adios!
Quickly, I rearranged my route,
excluding eros, endeavouring to enjoy
my exclusive trip, night’s ebony
sky empty of love’s epoxy.

Jennifer Grigg

SEXTLES

*
That horny Time Team bloke she loves
whose ancient moated spring by Thorn
joy for paleo finds awoke.

Hard latterly though to emote,
or such orthodoxy enjoy
with bones bonded by epoxy.

Debbie J. Jones

*
He is not exactly in the first flush
and has a habit with socks he can't break —
never takes 'em off. He won't be cowed,

wears them in BED! No matter how high the tempo
he fights in socks knee-high. His friends opine
that he's gone to Mariupol in socks, he
			sticks them on with epoxy. 

Nell Nelson

Wheedles day 2: 26 March, 2022

TWODLES

*
The distance between a plot and a plait
is shorter than Trump’s despot to depot.

Clare Best

*
Dirk Bogarde in Venice dancing with death,
ends with his final trip to the dye depot.

Nancy Somerville

THREEDLES

*
still composing poems
the footsore old loper
enters the depot

Donald Spy

*
Did we know the score?
Believers when we voted.
Dead letter depot!

Mike Farren

*
you ordered a heart
a text said 'paid by debit,
lost in the depot'

Alison Dunne

*
Sky the shade of slate.
Cy-, magent-, yell-, each toner
stuck in the depot.

Mark Totterdell

*
hides deep in a crate,
fellow travellers, pious,
mass at the depot

Richard Skinner

*
The chair of the board
is a first class idiot
fit for the depot

Jo Gilbert

*
now all is quiet –
time to grab that little feast
stored in the depot

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin

*
Early stills give frost,
draw dragon breaths; the Comet
staff by their depot.

Beth McDonough

*
Winter I bid adieu
All creatures bright, not dopey
Daffs galore, filling the depot

Hema

*
Life’s too audio;
settled down with a doner
from Kebab Depot.

Andy Jackson

*

Wool hauled by a mouse —
with which he plans to endow
the old bus depot.

Stephen Payne

*
<Debris re-imagined, a haiku for Ronnie Lane>

Daddy got his raise.
And the family all coped.
Peace at the depot.

Carl Tomlinson

*
Child offers, eyes moist,
hand holds out big penny groat,
seeks route to depot. 

Claire Urquhart

FOURDLES

*
A blind child cries, without a guide,
bombs sucking breath, raining death.
No amateur sabateur can defer, deter
the blast, the echo, from death’s depot.

Brenda Conn

*
Applaud the Cambridge crew who say ʻadieu, adieuʼ,
their oars shiver an edge, a hand, a wedge
ahead, the river breadth narrows, the depth
a bath, but ʻrow! row!ʼ to home past the freight depot.

Elisabeth Sennitt Clough

*
With much at stake I took a break,
my clothes once cloven now rewoven.
God knows, my darling, who chose those.
They came from Aleppo’s seediest depot.

Nell Nelson

*
Think aloud and do us proud. 
Don’t hide in tropes. We are no dopes. 
Truth-hungry cousins crave their daily dozen. 
While silence aids the despot, rhetoric’s an arms depot. 

Jayne Stanton

*
The bloke in the boatyard thinks I’m barely capable. See him stare
as I fumble the pin into the hole in the gunwhale, the oar onto the thole.
He wants to introduce me to the past tense of boat. It’s boated; noted,
and now I know you park it on a yard, a hard, a dock, a slip, NOT a depot.

Hilary Menos

*
For heaven’s sake – give me a break!
Christina Rossetti would not be so petty.
I am intrepid, it’s you who are tepid.
Sod off, allegretto, to the diffidents’ depot.

Ann Drysdale

*
Met some dates at the pearly gates
Cause of death? Lack of breath.
Heavily in debit,followed Mr Tebbitt
Would aye give my last Rolo for freedom from this depot.

Debbie J. Jones

*
Dream softly, she said, for you dream on my tread,
while there is breath, no dominion has death.
Life is just a habit but death is not a debit,
try a little Oulipo before that terminal depot.

Eddie Gibbons

QUINDLE

*
So stupid to stupidly stare,
feeling frit in the fetid
air — we aimed for wedgy,
stubbled, quibbling, cool; our debut
dance dainty toward the depot

Natalie Shaw

*
The rainfall shower’s stirring steam
stops me feeling so terse
but the bathroom blind’s bendy,
the grey grouting’s queasily fetid.
Let’s go to Plumb Depot.

Jill Munro

CINQUAIN

*
Stir, smile,
add some water.
Can he cook? Pray for theft
of the tastebuds. Serve love’s debut:
De-pot. 

Nikki Robson

*
Ovate —
lay a token
of organic ethos
in an egg box for the Detox
Depot.

Robbie Burton

*
All raise
glass with elbow!
Toast train without venom:
Thomas! Now back to (no decoy)
depot. 

Annie Fisher

SEXTLE

*
Not everyone likes to yodel
or perform with the horde
in an onomatopoeic rodeo.

Some prefer to demob
with afternoon tea in Devon:
clotted cream and jam at the depot.

E. R. Michie

Wheedles day 1: 25 March, 2022

TWODLES

*

We check Sunak’s maths. Some questions arise.
Is he buying us off? Or filling his chest?

Carl Tomlinson

*

On a riverbank the heron displays poise.
On a fence post he’s a neckless legless chest.

Robbie Burton

*

When Ukraine was invaded without just cause,
Volodymyr Zelensky unleashed his war chest.

Brenda Conn

*

Like Lewis Hamilton, if you MUST crash
do your level best … to protect your chest.

Nell Nelson

THREEDLES

*

Three rounds going spare?
Today’s just a lucky guess
what’s in the word chest!

Mike Farren

*

He drills at my crown
Fearsome tool on a cable
Spitting on my chest

Nikki Robson

*

Catch the faintest trace,
after drought, of drenched earth scent:
rainstorm in my chest.

Mark Totterdell

*

The outlook is bleak
In tune with the current trend
Get it off your chest.

Ann Drysdale

*

He took the candy,
an attempt to gain some clout,
sits heavy on chest.

Claire Urquhart

*

Freckles yeast the grape.
Fur the purple, take the shine —
Hide wine in my chest.

Natalie Shaw

*

sepia toner
conjures clear images; dials
tick in the hope chest

Richard Skinner

*

Not the sort to boast
she worked, loved, swore, earned a crust
but scorned the hope chest.

Alison Dunne

*

Know this from the start:
There’ll be pleasure in the quest
if there’s treasure in the chest

Richie Brown

FOURDLES

*

Please cast aside your foolish pride;

I’m incomplete when you’re not sweet,

my quest unblessed. Come, be my guest, 

and rest undressed upon my chest.

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin

*

The kilowatt hour is a measure of power:
the American Dream hailed the age of steam
and opened up the West to an unwanted guest
with a Winchester rifle slung across his chest.

Eddie Gibbons

*

To this milieu, we say adieu,
neither sleepy nor weepy,
no regrets, worries or frets,
we rest, with empty chests.

Jo Gilbert

*

Deepak Chopra knows no opera,
To win you, he means, in his teens.
His heart he’d fell and therein stell
You, the best, in his chest.

Hema

*

My childhood dream was to be Dolly. At eighteen I went full steam
ahead, boob job, low-cut dress, booked Toni & Guy to bleach every tress.
I was blonde, busty, a bombshell, but failed the lookalike test. My quest
was hopeless. Now when I hear her Best Of, my heart keens in my chest

Hilary Menos

*

These lines are in lieu of an adieu;
time I wasn’t here. Time to steer
on different seas. Please wear these
words, my best, as a jewel on your chest.

Andy Jackson

*

Each daily bout, it carries clout.
Each fresh start grows your progress chart.
No clock to beat, no time to cheat.
Not Wordling your best? Keep it close to your chest.

Jayne Stanton

*

Ah, I’ll write my own obit, I think, and split
the task. First, to list my vices, then to wrest
some virtues from the mix. A test! Now the quest
becomes, at best, a way to beat my own chest.

Clare Best

*

Summer on the Algarve. He was suave.
His sandals and beach clothes were those of a poser
par excellence. Christ what a heist —
her necklace finessed from her heaving chest.

Stephen Payne

*

She has a daughter she just can't alter
who's in love with a mouthy bloke from Stoke —
bloody pest. The mother stops him, makes it her quest
to contest, muscled arms folded across her chest.

Elisabeth Sennitt Clough

QUINDLES

*

Guarded, keen yet to grind
gamey grist. In teams we
gauge who stole, who gave
quiescent love. Great my upset.
Gravely gapes our bridal chest.

Debbie J. Jones

*

Despite years of tough tears
and hills climbed, so steep,
you, baby, make me blest.
Gorgeous guy, my heart’s guest –
beats quicken on your chest.

Jill Munro

*

I felt the first flush
quicken, the fast, fierce phase
and — charmed by the chase —
I chose hearts, not chess,
cards held to my chest.

E.T. Michie

CRAPSEY CINQUAIN

*

Weary?
Dream of lost homes
under toads. Find your shell.
Wonder whose heart was quick in these,
which chest.

Beth McDonough