If you’ve been on the internet long enough, you know Rule 34: If it exists, there’s porn of it.
That may sound crude, especially in the time of age-verification laws requiring users’ personal data to visit NSFW sites (and sometimes SFW sites, too), but Rule 34 was coined by a British teen in 2003, according to a 2016 Washington Post article. The early 2000s were a wildly different time on the internet. Pre-Instagram, pre-TikTok, pre-age verification. But porn? Porn always existed online.
While the web has changed a lot over the past 20 years since “Rule 34” was defined, it still rings true — especially when you look at Rule34dle, a mashup of the infamous rule and everyone’s favorite word game, Wordle.
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Like Wordle, Rule34dle is a game, but distinctly different. When you go on the site, you’ll be paired with two fictional franchise characters (like Pokémon) and told how many pornographic posts exist of the one on the left. The number of smutty posts for the character on the right is hidden. You must guess which of the two has more explicit art out there online.
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If you’re right, you’ll then be paired with the character with the higher smut count and a new character — and you’ll build your streak from there.
There are also several variations to play the game, including franchise characters, removing AI results, and “hard mode,” which makes you choose between three characters, and with all explicit post numbers hidden.
Rule34dle, created by Reddit user u/DandelionGaming based on an idea from u/PensAndEndorsement on Reddit, according to the website, also features a daily challenge. Each day, you can play 10 comparison rounds with different characters in each round. You’ll have to guess blindly — the number of porny art posts for both characters will be hidden. The daily challenge is the same for everyone, and even if you get one wrong, you can still play through all 10 rounds.
And good news for fan fiction fans: There’s also an alpha version of AO3dle out there, where you can guess which of two characters has more erotica works written about them on the fan fiction website Archive of Our Own (also known as AO3). AO3dle features both a unique pairing and a daily challenge, like Rule34dle does.
As Kotaku pointed out, streamers are playing Rule34dle with their friends, and with hilarious results, on TikTok.
