I was idly musing the other month that I've not seen so much hacking on web projects since I started web development back in 97, as I've recently seen with people building around the ideas for web3.
I was very happy to see Wordle, the game created by Josh Wardle, re-introduce what the web is great for to so many new people, both for regular users of the web and developers. It's a fun game, it works well on mobile, it's easy to access (via a link), it's quick to load, it's not loaded with ads, it's easy to use, it's easy to install if you want and not push if you don't, and doesn't hit you with notifications, and it's inspired developers to create similar experiences.
If you want to hear about how this was built and the thinking behind it, check out this video with Marques & Josh, it offers some great insight and is just an all round nice video to watch.
Wordle was an affirmation of the web and what it enables for everyone. Thank you Josh! (and congratulations on the sale).
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If like me, you found that it was pretty hard to Google for the games and projects that have been inspired by Wordle, I've listed a couple here:
- Wordle (The original)
- Japanese Wordle (Kotobade Asobou - Source code) - I'm quite happy to have outscored my wife a couple of times with one.
- Welsh Wordle (Cyrdle) - My wife and I have just started to learn Welsh, so we will be using this.
- Catalan
- Brazilian Portuguese "Termo" by Fernando Serboncini
- Norwegian Wordle (https://twitter.com/WordleNorge)
- Swedish
- French
- Italian
- Chinese Hanzi
- [Insert yours here] (Tweet at me or email me if you have any suggestions)
The great thing is that many of the above versions also have their code available on github. Speaking of code, there are also many different clones using a variety of frameworks:
- Reactle - Wordle built with React.
- Vue - Wordle built with Vue
- Svelte - Wordle built with Svelte
- AlpineJS - Wordle built with AlpineJS and Tailwind
I do wonder if this will become the new TodoMVC.... ;)
It's even inspired some variations on the theme:
- Cross Wordle (by Flackr - Source) - I love this one, but I find it very difficult
- Absurdle
- Infinite Version
- Quordle - 4 Wordle's at a time. Super hard.
- SSH - play it on our CLI.
And even some tools:
- Wordle Analyzer by Jake Archibald - put in all your guesses and it will tell you the optimal path through.
- Solver