One of my favorite morning rituals is a shot at Cardle. Wordle? No, Cardle. Cup of coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, I try to guess what car is in the photo every day, based on close-ups. It’s satisfying to get it right on the first try and flex in a group chat, especially when a bunch of my car nerd friends also play it.
There are two different sites for Cardle: Playcardle.com, which we’re calling “US Cardle” in this piece, and Cardle.uk, which we’ll call “UK Cardle”. The premise is similar – guess the car! – but there are some differences.
Let’s start with US Cardle. You have to guess the make, model, and year in five tries, using two drop-down menus and a field where you enter the year, with a two-year plus-minus leeway for getting it right. The site rates your guesses with green and red blobs, and it’s nice to have a streak going on with repeated successful guesses day after day.
Generally, since the site seems US-based, I tend to adjust my Car Brain so that Nissan Primeras become Infiniti G20s and year-by-year differences are US-biased. To explain, a BMW E28 M5 can be a 1988 car, and a Peugeot 405 cannot be newer than a 1991 model. My shortcomings are usually that I cannot tell different late-model SUVs apart, but sometimes the closeups have a bit of a badge showing, and I’ll just run with that.
The other site is UK Cardle. Here, we have a fundamentally different approach – you have five tries to guess the make and model, but the year doesn’t matter. You type the car name in manually, based on five close-ups.
Compared to US Cardle, UK Cardle is markedly worse. The site seems automated – I’m sure the US version also has some sort of script to help run it – but that makes it wildly inconsistent.
Sometimes you have to type the whole car name in the correct order (for example, “Vauxhall Chevette HS 2300,” as “2300 HS” isn’t accepted), and other times, the spec doesn’t matter, and the site only accepts make and model.
For instance, on Sunday, the first photo showed a green wagon with a bit of wood trim, so naturally, my guess was “Morris Minor Traveller.” Nope, that’s not the answer the site wanted. Maybe “Morris Traveller”? No, that’s not it either.
Could it just want “Morris Minor”? That’s right! And the correct answer the site printed out? “Morris Minor 1000 Traveller”! But somehow that’s not what it wanted me to type. What a world!
Somehow, that’s not even the worst example. The other week, the correct answer for an obvious Honda NSX wasn’t “Honda NSX” but … “Honda NSX 9.” What even is that?
The answer is: the file name of the Wikimedia photo that the site pulled. Honda NSX 9.jpeg. I’m not making this up. Incredible!
Of course, the whole site is just something somebody cooked up for fun and likely doesn’t spend too much time fine-tuning it. But come on, it should be consistent, and accidentally including and requiring parts of FILE NAMES makes for infuriating playing.
I still play it every day, but among my group of friends, it’s become either a sport of spotting how wrong it is, or then completely avoided to save the trouble. Obviously, I take it seriously, but that’s the nature of car nerd-dom sometimes.
Do you play one of these Cardles? If you do, great! If I’ve now introduced a new headache in your life, sorry!
[Top image by author]
Tried it for the first time and what do I get?
A freaking Nissan Murano Crosscabriolet. Amazing.
I came here this morning to say this as well. Couldn’t be a more appropriate vehicle for this site. But its actually just a Murano according to the answer
I was very sad that it didn’t want the CC portion.
Yeah. Today’s one is fitting as well!
Spoilers, spoilers!
Sorry, sorry! I won’t spoil today’s, but it’s interesting too!
Love it but disappointed that only one puzzle per day is offered
I knew about the UK site and have gotten pretty good at it unless its something really obscure like an Alvis or Armstrong-Sideley or something from the Rootes Group. Thanks for the tip on the US version–my current streak there is 1.
Thanks for the new hobby. I’ve been looking for something similar since they shut down QuizUp.
They’re not terribly new. The US version has been around for over a year now, at least I’ve been playing that long. The UK for even longer.
I gave up on the UK version for the reasons listed months ago.
Got today’s US one on my second go (make and year on the first, and I’m not normally good on years). I live (kinda) in the UK market yet never heard of today’s car.
I tried today’s US version.
However, I had never heard of the model. It took me 4 tries just to get the make.
I failed today.
But I’ll try again tomorrow.
I got the make first try (beginners luck most likely) but I am not well versed with the models of that manufacturer, I just guessed the names that sounded familiar. None of them were correct.
Thanks for the new diversion. I got the British car in two tries, American in four (probably would have been three if I was on a computer and not a phone.).
The UK Cardle had that Traveller featured two days in a row for me. The first was frustrating, but the second time ’round on the gee-tar, it took ‘Morris Minor Traveller’ just fine.
Sometimes I need Wikipedia, whether to confirm or whether to give me more than a vague idea, but not today! The shape of that roofline is just a giveaway.
I’ve never heard of this but of course now I’m hooked.
Of interesting note, my former employer of 15 years is apparently a sponsor.
I propose Aydyl. Use an AI to mash together some approximation of a car. The game presents randomly an AI or a real car. The player has to guess if what it’s presenting it’s real or ai and if real what the make, model and year the presented vehicle is.
My version is when my wife is watching one of these house hunting shows. They always show the couple chatting inside their car on the way to a house so I always try to guess the car just based on the interior. I probably get it 75% of the time.
Me too!
Wife: “What are you distracted by?”
Me: “What car do they own? I need to know!!”
Also a fun game on those hunting shows, try to figure out based on the background locations early in the episode which house the couple actually winds up purchasing. Sometimes there will be something very identifiable that shows up in one of the (usually 3) houses they’re shown.
Never heard of this, but that intro pic would’ve been easy to spot as a Ford Consul Classic. What do I win?
I do not play Cardle, (yet) but I am fond of the oft obfuscated, sometimes historic, sometimes folkloric, occasionally automotive or quasi-automotive Car Talk Puzzler. Shame it’s all reruns so you can’t send that answer on the back of a $20 to Our Fair City. But it’s still fun to guess as they go.
Yes, the Autopian needs to revive the Car Talk Puzzler!!!!!!
I think I hate you
So what am I so afraid of?
I’m afraid that I’m not sure of
A game there is no cure for.
I play US Cardle every day. Some days I nail it in one guess and other days I stare in complete confusion at the fender of some recent SUV I can’t possibly guess.
add supercars as pretty tough for me. there’s only so much I can recall about a wild carbon fiber intake with fins and stuff. I usually call it a win if I can at least get the manufacturer down.
Yep.
My BIL, nephew & I did a few rounds. I easily got one early on—then failed to the point of frustration. That’s largely due to the fact that I lost interest in current cars during the chiseled-panel era a decade or more back after I idly mistook a Toyota for a BMW.
As of this week, I have the top 1 month score on US Cardle, and I’m not kidding when I say it’s one of my life’s greatest achievements. It’s mostly dumb luck that we’ve hit a streak of the right kind of mundane for me (I immediately shared the ’02 Sebring convertible from earlier this week with a friend who’s on a similar wavelength as he’d never heard of either Cardle).
I had enough with Connections and Wordle lol another one to the collection to burn time at work
Just gave it a try, got today’s right on my third attempt, and now I’m probably hooked until I get more than two in a row wrong and it ruins my day so I stop.
I’m pretty sure this would piss me off more than it would provide me with enjoyment.
No, I shall abstain, my cartism is bad enough as it is thankyouverymuch
Just came by to flex that I was Top 3 (#2 I think?) all time at Doug Demuro’s Monday Car Quiz on Oversteer/Autotrader when it came to an unceremonious end. Unfortunately I fear that feat is lost to history, but I am still proud, as the snippets of car were much smaller and much more obscure.
Ah the good ol’ days when Doug interacted with us plebians and not just is SoCal friends…..
If you can find the link you might be able to see the leaderboard on the Internet Archive!
Tried but apparently Autotrader Oversteer was so short lived it never made it to the way back machine!
Wish The Autopian still had trivia sessions too
I play both daily (plus Wordle and Globle) during my morning “routine”; recently found the PlayCardle which is better. The biggest problem with Cardle.uk is that it is not consistent on what is a correct answer. Sometimes it will accept just make and model, other times will reject the answer because I didn’t include something like “Mark 1” or “Series II”. Also, the Cardle.UK has recently started with car roofs, making it pretty difficult. I can say I got today’s correct on my first try (I won’t spoil it by posting the answer here).
Yep, I got that one on first try too. It’s a dangerous thing to start with such success.
Ooooh, I already spend way too much time on r/whatisthiscar on Reddit, this sounds like the perfect way to waste 10 minutes of my morning haha.