The sharing of the scores is brilliant; it's even morphed into the inevitable world of memes where folks modify the colors and rows of results.
I work at a trivia/quiz company, a pretty danged popular one mentioned in the NY Times crossword puzzles about once a year. It's been both awe inspiring and slightly crushing to see Wordle rocket to the top of pop culture. But it's been almost entirely inspirational. I love the game. It's so well-crafted and simple and accessible, device agnostic and ... free! There's a head scratcher for so many. And oh my god, so refreshing.
Meanwhile, no shortage of scummy folks have been scrambling all over the app stores to try and clone the game to make a quick buck. The funny thing? You can actually load the game in your browser and go to File > Save Page As and save it locally. It's really just a big javascript file that doesn't even require being online to play. You can play it every single day the same way you always have - and not even require an internet connection.
Naturally, some smart retro tech folks have been looking to port the game onto other platforms as well.
First up: Spiro Harvey, with help from Dan Sanderson (dddaaannn) for the Commodore 64.
Spiro has been making some YouTube videos about the project, which are pretty interesting if you're into coding topics on the beloved 8-bit platform.
The early results are pretty fantastic. I can't wait to see how this ultimately lands.
Incredibly, the fun doesn't stop there. A talented engineer named Robbie Nesmith even ported it to Palm devices running at least OS 3.2. I first saw it in action here:
But then, even better was the colorized version!
From the developer:
Currently it only really works on Palm devices with a color screen. I'd like to have it work on B+W devices in the future.
Also it doesn't have a list of all correct words to check against so you can enter whatever you'd like. Try to guess real words if you want an authentic experience.
I can't help but dream of a potential version being made some day for the glorious Apple Newton. No, that's not a joke.
With the NY Times purchasing Wordle, I can only hope most of the scummy app clones will get a cleanse from the App Stores. But I like to think they'll leave old retro platforms alone, especially since the games I've seen have all been quick coding projects and released to the public for free for retro tech nerds like us.
I love it!