Gaz Coombes

Overview

Wordle was built by software engineer Josh Wardle as something for him and his girlfriend to play but it became a phenomenon during assorted lockdown periods in the wake of the global pandemic. So much so that it was acquired by the New York Times at the start of the year for a “seven-figure” sum.

It spawned a multitude of imitators such as Heardle (guess the song from a string of clips), Globle (guess the country from its shape), Moviedle (guess the movie from a hyper-compressed edit), Framed (guess the movie from a series of stills) and Quordle (guess four words at once).

Now Gaz Coombes – solo artist and singer in Supergrass – has created his own guessing game based on his post-Supergrass career, calling it Gazzle.

“Try your hand at the brand new, groundbreaking, never been done before, not like anything else, GAZZLE!” he tweeted in a delightfully self-effacing way to announce its launch.

Like Wordle and others, there is only one game per day. Add into this the fact that he has only released three solo albums to date and there is only so long it can run before it starts repeating itself.

Obviously the clips are not long enough to trigger a royalty payment every time they are played (they only run in increments up to 16 seconds), but the hope is that it will draw you in with the familiar and then hold you with the unfamiliar, meaning you go on and explore his catalogue in greater depth.

It is unlikely that a major US media brand will swoop in and buy the game from him, but that is very much not the point. It’s a game that looks to mimic the multitude of similar games out there while simultaneously (and gently) mocking their ubiquity. In marketing, creating something for fun or the sheer hell of it can be as powerful as creating something that is designed solely with KPIs, USPs and other acronyms in mind.

Maybe you actually can have your cake and eat it, too. Now there’s an idea for a new online guessing game – Cakle.

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