I made a search dictionary for Wordle as a little side project. Yes, I know it kinda defeats the purpose of Wordle 😉 but hopefully it may be useful to folks when a certain word is just beyond the...
I made a search dictionary for Wordle as a little side project. Yes, I know it kinda defeats the purpose of Wordle 😉 but hopefully it may be useful to folks when a certain word is just beyond the tip of the tongue.
I've been mainly using it as a way to learn Vue and play around with different practices and approaches, so the UI may appear a little uneven.
edit: also feedback on the UI is welcome. I notice that when I spend so much time designing and building, that that level of intimacy with the interface renders me blind to its shortcomings.
This looks great! Awesome work, and thanks for sharing it with us. I don't plan on using it to solve puzzles, but I like the idea of using it to investigate possibilities after the fact. A few...
This looks great! Awesome work, and thanks for sharing it with us.
I don't plan on using it to solve puzzles, but I like the idea of using it to investigate possibilities after the fact. A few days ago I had a bit of a nail-biter, and I was curious after I'd finished if I'd run through all the possibilities and got it on the last chance, or if there were more options and I could have run out of turns. Your tool helped me check that!
As for the UI, I think it looks great. One suggestion: it might make more sense to turn the keyboard keys yellow instead of green? Wordle uses green to say right letter AND right placement, but if I'm choosing a letter in the keyboard instead of the five boxes up top, that means I don't know its placement, which Wordle uses yellow to convey.
The website works pretty well on mobile. But I never played Wordle so I don't how useful it is. This is off topic, but I'd love if someone could tell me what's special about Wordle that makes it...
The website works pretty well on mobile. But I never played Wordle so I don't how useful it is.
This is off topic, but I'd love if someone could tell me what's special about Wordle that makes it so valuable. It seems like a regular word guessing game to me, but I'm certain there's something special about it otherwise people wouldn't care so much.
Part of it is, everyone's guessing the same word. So there's a community aspect. Part of it is, you only get one word per day, so there's a scarcity aspect. And part of it is, it lets you share...
Part of it is, everyone's guessing the same word. So there's a community aspect. Part of it is, you only get one word per day, so there's a scarcity aspect. And part of it is, it lets you share your score on social media, so there's a competitive aspect.
A couple more reasons to add on to this: It's easy to pick up and understand, and it's fun for all ages. I showed my students one puzzle and half of them got hooked from that alone. They like...
A couple more reasons to add on to this:
It's easy to pick up and understand, and it's fun for all ages. I showed my students one puzzle and half of them got hooked from that alone. They like playing it; I like playing it; my mom likes playing it.
The scarcity aspect of not immediately being able to try another one adds to its longevity, I think. You can't play out the idea by playing through puzzle after puzzle until the appeal wears off, and you have to choose to come back to keep playing.
Also a single puzzle is short enough that it's easy to keep up with day after day. It's nice, bite-sized entertainment.
It's playable without downloading an app and works well on desktop and mobile browsers, so there's no friction to trying it out.
The words the game uses aren't super uncommon Scrabble-dictionary-type words (though it will accept those as guesses) so you never feel like a winning term is unfair. The solution is always something recognizable -- like "LEMON" instead of "CRWTH".
Also, and I think this is probably the biggest reason: the community aspect gives people a positive, low-stakes topic of conversation. My husband and I do the puzzle independently every day and then discuss our solutions with one another. My students are excited to tell me about their strategies and when they do particularly well on a given day's puzzle. I have a Wordle group chat with friends where we talk about puzzles and our preferred starting words.
Because it's gotten such reach and is so common, if you bring it up when chatting with someone, it's likely the person is either a) already playing it or b) could easily pick it up. I brought it up with a coworker last Friday who'd never played it, for example, and she excitedly texted me on Saturday morning that she'd guessed that day's word. Furthermore, there's no stakes if someone isn't playing it or isn't interested. They're not likely to judge you for liking Wordle or bringing it up. You'll just move on to talking about something else.
There was an article from last year that really stuck with me called "I like that the boat is stuck" about the cargo ship that blocked the Suez Canal. Part of the reason I liked it was that it captured the idea of something occupying a simple, common, positive topical space in an informational and social environment that is otherwise complex, fragmented, and incendiary:
I like that, so far, we all seem to agree that the boat is stuck. There's no debate over whether or not the big boat is stuck: it is a big boat, and it is stuck, and we are all aware of those facts, even those of us who are currently located in outer space.
Furthermore, most of us share the opinion that it's disagreeable, logistically, for the boat to be stuck. The boat being stuck is inconvenient. It's a big disruption! Nobody can say it isn't a big disruption. None of my distant relatives will get into arguments on The Face Website about whether or not the stuck boat is making a nuisance for lots of people. I like that.
I feel like Wordle is similar to that. It's simple, easy, shared positivity.
I made a search dictionary for Wordle as a little side project. Yes, I know it kinda defeats the purpose of Wordle 😉 but hopefully it may be useful to folks when a certain word is just beyond the tip of the tongue.
I've been mainly using it as a way to learn Vue and play around with different practices and approaches, so the UI may appear a little uneven.
edit: also feedback on the UI is welcome. I notice that when I spend so much time designing and building, that that level of intimacy with the interface renders me blind to its shortcomings.
This looks great! Awesome work, and thanks for sharing it with us.
I don't plan on using it to solve puzzles, but I like the idea of using it to investigate possibilities after the fact. A few days ago I had a bit of a nail-biter, and I was curious after I'd finished if I'd run through all the possibilities and got it on the last chance, or if there were more options and I could have run out of turns. Your tool helped me check that!
As for the UI, I think it looks great. One suggestion: it might make more sense to turn the keyboard keys yellow instead of green? Wordle uses green to say right letter AND right placement, but if I'm choosing a letter in the keyboard instead of the five boxes up top, that means I don't know its placement, which Wordle uses yellow to convey.
The website works pretty well on mobile. But I never played Wordle so I don't how useful it is.
This is off topic, but I'd love if someone could tell me what's special about Wordle that makes it so valuable. It seems like a regular word guessing game to me, but I'm certain there's something special about it otherwise people wouldn't care so much.
Part of it is, everyone's guessing the same word. So there's a community aspect. Part of it is, you only get one word per day, so there's a scarcity aspect. And part of it is, it lets you share your score on social media, so there's a competitive aspect.
A couple more reasons to add on to this:
It's easy to pick up and understand, and it's fun for all ages. I showed my students one puzzle and half of them got hooked from that alone. They like playing it; I like playing it; my mom likes playing it.
The scarcity aspect of not immediately being able to try another one adds to its longevity, I think. You can't play out the idea by playing through puzzle after puzzle until the appeal wears off, and you have to choose to come back to keep playing.
Also a single puzzle is short enough that it's easy to keep up with day after day. It's nice, bite-sized entertainment.
It's playable without downloading an app and works well on desktop and mobile browsers, so there's no friction to trying it out.
The words the game uses aren't super uncommon Scrabble-dictionary-type words (though it will accept those as guesses) so you never feel like a winning term is unfair. The solution is always something recognizable -- like "LEMON" instead of "CRWTH".
Also, and I think this is probably the biggest reason: the community aspect gives people a positive, low-stakes topic of conversation. My husband and I do the puzzle independently every day and then discuss our solutions with one another. My students are excited to tell me about their strategies and when they do particularly well on a given day's puzzle. I have a Wordle group chat with friends where we talk about puzzles and our preferred starting words.
Because it's gotten such reach and is so common, if you bring it up when chatting with someone, it's likely the person is either a) already playing it or b) could easily pick it up. I brought it up with a coworker last Friday who'd never played it, for example, and she excitedly texted me on Saturday morning that she'd guessed that day's word. Furthermore, there's no stakes if someone isn't playing it or isn't interested. They're not likely to judge you for liking Wordle or bringing it up. You'll just move on to talking about something else.
There was an article from last year that really stuck with me called "I like that the boat is stuck" about the cargo ship that blocked the Suez Canal. Part of the reason I liked it was that it captured the idea of something occupying a simple, common, positive topical space in an informational and social environment that is otherwise complex, fragmented, and incendiary:
I feel like Wordle is similar to that. It's simple, easy, shared positivity.
It's just a fun, easy puzzle to bust your brain on once a day.
Frankly it deserves neither the passion or the hate it's gotten, it's just a thing.