Ever since Wordle went mainstream, we’ve seen its fans create their own versions of the game making players guess the answer in the strangest ways unthinkable. Until now, we’ve seen various versions of Wordle that are based on topics ranging from maths, geography, music, movies, celebrities, and other puzzles. 

If you find yourself addicted to Wordle and you’re a football fan (or soccer fan, depending on your region), then “Who Are Ya?” is the perfect game for you. The game follows the footsteps of Wordle where your goal (pun intended!) is to guess the name of the football player from Europe’s top leagues based on a blurred picture and other clues that will be revealed based on your guesses. 

In this post, we’ll explain what is “Who Are Ya?”, how it works, and how to play it. 

What is ‘Who Are Ya?’ game?

Who Are Ya? is a Wordle clone that challenges your football fandom by making you guess the player from their blurred picture. The player can be anybody from any team playing in Europe’s top five leagues – Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1. While that may sound easy, the only clue to get you started is an image of a player that’s blurred and discolored. 

As you make your guesses, the blur intensity of the image will reduce gradually to give you a better idea about who might be the player. You can type your guess and based on your guess, you will get additional clues like the player’s nationality, league, club, position, and age. You can then use any of these aspects that you may have gotten right to make the next guess and then move on from there. 

Who Are Ya? Rules

If you’re a person who watches a lot of football, you can start playing “Who Are Ya?” straight away. The rules of the game are simple. You get a total of 8 attempts at guessing the right player who is present in the burred picture. The first image will be extremely blurry and with subsequent attempts, the images will become slightly less blurred. 

As for the player name you can guess, the guess will only be valid if:

  • The player names appear in the search list when you start typing their name. You cannot type a name that doesn’t appear in the game’s list.
  • The footballer plays in any of Europe’s top five leagues – Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1.
  • The player has made at least one appearance at a club in any of the aforementioned leagues.
  • Players who are registered to a club but haven’t played any of their games in the respective league won’t show up inside the game’s search tool. This implies that footballers who have played for a club but for non-league games won’t be eligible to appear here. 

Based on your previous attempts, you will be able to narrow down your next guess just like on Wordle. If you’ve nailed any of the player’s nationality, league, club, position, or age correctly, it will light up in green color so that you know you guessed it right.  

Who Are Ya? Gameplay explained

When you first open Who Are Ya?, you will be able to see the game’s name at the very top alongside which number (#) of puzzle you’re playing; in this instance, it’s the 33rd puzzle today.

The game’s developer has recently given users the choice of whether they want to see the blurred image of the player or not. If you want the game to be challenging, you can keep the photo hidden and rely sold on your football knowledge the guess the player.

If not, you can use the Show photo option to get a glimpse of the player. If you opt to view the player photo, you’ll see a blurred and discolored image of the football player you have to identify. 

Just under this image is a box where you type in your guess. Here, you will get see player suggestions when you enter just two letters of the player’s name you like to guess. From here, users can just click on the name of the footballer to confirm their guess. 

When you make a guess, the player’s details will load up below his blurred image and this image will be a little less blurred than the original one. As for the details, you will see a row of 5 tiles below the player name.

These 5 tiles will represent the player’s nationality, the league and club they’re playing in, the position in which they play, and their age. If you guessed any of these tiles correctly, they’ll be colored in green, thus helping you narrow down the right answer in your future attempts. If the correct player doesn’t have any resemblance with the player you guessed, all of the 5 tiles will be grey in color. 

Player nationality: When this tile lights in green, it means you guessed the correct nationality of the player you have to identify. If incorrect, the tile will look greyed out. For instance, if you guessed Smith Rowe and the first tile isn’t green in color, the player you need to identify doesn’t play for England. 

League: When this tile lights in green, the player you guessed plays in the same league as the one in the answer. If the tile is grey in color, the player doesn’t play in a league that you guessed, so there’s no point guessing a footballer who plays in the same league. 

Club: When lit in green, the correct player plays in the same club as the player you guessed. If you guessed the correct club, the League tile will also appear green in color. 

Position: If you guessed a player who plays in the same position as the correct answer, this tile will be highlighted in green. This way, you can avoid guessing the names of players who play in the same position across other leagues. For eg., if your answer is a goalkeeper and the player you guessed is Andrea Consigli but this tile will light up in green. 

Age: If you guessed a player who is of the same age as the player you need to identify, this tile will be colored in green. If the age is incorrect, it will be grey in color but you will see up or down arrows adjacent to the guessed age. These arrows will tell you whether the guessed age is lower or higher than the actual age of the correct player.

In the screenshot above, you can determine from the last two guesses that the correct age of the player to be determined falls between 30 and 35. 

How to play Who Are Ya?

Now that you know how the game works, you can start playing it by visiting the official page – Who Are Ya?. If you want to make your guess with a blurred image of the player, click on Show Photo. 

You’ll now see an image at the top of the page that’s blurred and discolored. You can check out this image to look for visual indications like hairstyle, facial structure, or skin tone before making your first guess. 

Get started

To enter a guess, type the first two letters of the player’s name to see suggestions. If a player doesn’t show up inside the search results, you can try their first, middle, or last names individually. 

When the player you want to guess appears in the suggested list, click on it to confirm your attempt. 

After you enter your guess, you should see how good your guess was by looking for green tiles among grey ones in the row that appears below the blurred picture.

If any of the player’s nationality, league, club, position, or age is correct, its respective tile on your guess will show up in green. 

The right way to approach

Nailing the player’s nationality can help you in a great way as you can now deduce the answer in minimum attempts.

The same is true if you can guess the player’s club correctly, as you can avoid listing players in a certain position or age bracket. Like in this case, having guessed Pogba in the previous attempt made us realize that the correct player also plays at Manchester United, thus helping us pinpoint our guess to Fred. 

A good way to approach the game is to cover all leagues in your first few attempts, so you can round up your future moves intelligently. For eg., if your previous guesses involved players from Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, and Ligue 1, and the “League” tile on all four of them remained grey in color, you can narrow down that the player to identify belongs in Serie A. 

Another significant step in determining a player is to look for the right range of ages. Even if you guess an incorrect player whose age doesn’t match that of the correct answer, the “Age” tile will still be helpful in determining the right age. That’s because this tile shows you whether you’ve gone over or under the correct age by showing down or up arrows. 

If nothing works, you can still find the correct player by guessing players at different positions. Like in this case, after failing to get the “Position” tile green, we could narrow down that the player we have to determine is a goalkeeper. 

The more the number of green tiles, the easier it would be for you to make the right guess and in fewer attempts. If you successfully guess the correct player in 8 attempts, all 5 tiles under the player’s name will be green in color. 

Check your stats and share your score

When you win a challenge, your statistics should load up on the screen with the ability to share your Who Are Ya? score. To share your score, click on Share inside this box. 

The shared result will look something like this when pasted on Twitter. 

Who Are Ya? Hard Mode

For people who spend too much time watching football or playing FIFA, the game’s developer has rolled out a new Hard Mode. You can enable it at the start by clicking Hide Photo when the “Feeling Confident” banner shows up. 

When enabled, you won’t see the blurred image of the player you have to identify and your only clues are from the guesses you make. So, just like Wordle, there are no initial clues to get you started. Instead of a blurred picture, you’ll only see a question mark appear on the screen. 

You can also enable Hard mode after the game loads up by clicking on the cogwheel icon at the top right corner. 

In the Settings box that appears, turn on the Hard Mode toggle to play the game without the picture. 

When does Who Are Ya reset?

Just like Wordle, Who Are Ya resets every day at midnight local time. This means you can get a new puzzle when the clock strikes 12 AM in your region. When you access the statistics section inside the same, you’ll see the time remaining for the next puzzle under the “New footballer in” label.

Can you play more than one puzzle a day?

Yes. While Who Are Ya? only lets you play today’s puzzle once, you can still play more puzzles from the game’s archive. From here, you can play all the old games that were listed on The Who Are Ya? webpage in the past. 

How to play old challenges on Who Are Ya?

Who Are Ya? lets you play older challenges other than today’s puzzle. To play an older challenge, go to Who Are Ya? and click on the Calendar icon on the left side of the player image.

When you do that, the game will show yesterday’s challenge. You can find older ones by repeating this step again on an older puzzle page. 

How to choose puzzles from one league?

If you’re someone whose football knowledge is selective and you think Who Are Ya? is hard, then the game’s developers have created alternate versions where you have to guess a player from a league of your choice. This way, you can play Who Are Ya? with specific leagues like Premier League, La Liga, and Bundesliga. 

That’s all you need to know about playing Who Are Ya? football wordle. 

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