Wortsel - A Word Game

Wortsel is a browser-based word game inspired by Wordle, allowing players to guess a hidden word within six attempts. The game is designed as a Progressive Web App (PWA) and can be played on both mobile devices and desktop browsers.

🔗 Play Here: Wortsel

📜 Disclaimer

Wortsel is an independent, non-commercial project created for fun and personal use. It is inspired by Wordle but has no direct affiliation with Wordle or its developers. All rights to Wordle belong to their respective owners. Wortsel is a unique interpretation of the game with additional features and is not an official Wordle product. The project does not provide downloadable software and is not intended for redistribution. It has also been used as the basis for white-label deployments (e.g. FAZ). All brand assets in such deployments belong to their respective owners.

What Makes Wortsel Unique?

• Optional Word List: Players can enable or disable dictionary verification for either a structured challenge or more flexible input.
• Unlimited Rounds: No daily limit – play as many puzzles as you like.
• Support for German Characters: Ä, Ö, and Ü are playable, making it perfect for German words.
• Free Cursor Movement: Instead of typing strictly from left to right, the cursor can be placed anywhere in the word.
• Keyboard Animations & Arrow Keys: Visual feedback and the ability to move the cursor using arrow keys.
• Offline Play: Thanks to an integrated service worker, the game can be played without an internet connection.
• Responsive Design: Optimized for both desktop and mobile devices.
• Settings Persistence: Last game options are stored in localStorage.
• Saved Game Resume: Unfinished puzzles are automatically saved and can be resumed when the page is reloaded.
• Shareable Puzzles:
  • Append ?t=<token> to the URL to set a specific solution, useful for custom challenges.
  • Tokens encode the solution index and are validated on load; invalid tokens are ignored.
  • After loading, the parameter is removed so that refreshes start a random puzzle again.
  • In the stats dialog there is a Share Button, which generates such a link (with token) and opens the device’s Share Sheet (or copies the link).
• Hard Mode (strict): Once enabled, green letters are locked in place, gray keys cannot be used again, and yellow letters may not be placed again at the same position. This stricter variant reduces trial‑and‑error and forces more deduction, going beyond Wordle’s hard mode.
  • Community stats — after each game, a dialog shows the global attempt distribution (1–6 and X). Your own result row is highlighted.
  • Least‑played solution — by default, the game fetches the least‑played word from the server to ensure variety across the community. If unavailable, a random fallback is used.

How to Play

1. Enter a five-letter word.
2. Press Enter to check the word.
3. Colors indicate how close you are:
   • Green: Letter is correct and in the right position.
   • Yellow: Letter is in the word but in the wrong position.
   • Gray: Letter is not in the word.
4. Solve the word within six attempts.

Settings

• Whole words only (wholeWords): If enabled, guesses must be valid dictionary words; invalid guesses are rejected.
• Hard Mode (strict) (hardMode): Locks green letters, disables gray keys, and forbids repeating a yellow letter at the same position in later guesses.

Community Statistics (Privacy‑friendly)

• After game end, Wortsel sends the outcome (attempt 1–6 or fail) and fetches the aggregated distribution for the specific solution.
• The server replies atomically with the updated stats.
• The modal shows seven rows (1–6 and X), scaled by the largest bucket; your row is highlighted.
• No personal data is transmitted; only the normalized solution key and bucket counts are stored.

Offline: When offline, the game works normally but stats cannot be updated or displayed. (Optional backlog/flush can be added in future.)

Install as a PWA

• For Chrome, Edge, or Firefox: Select "Add to Home Screen."
• For iOS: Open the page in Safari and use the "Share" menu to add it to the home screen.

White-Label / Custom Deployments

Besides the public version, Wortsel has also been adapted as a white-label solution.
For example, a custom build was created for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), embedded via <iframe> on their site.

The codebase is structured with a core layer (shared game logic and Wortsel’s default styles) and theme layers (e.g. theme-faz.css).
This separation allows different skins (branding, typography, colors, icons) while keeping one maintainable codebase.

Key aspects:

• Shared game engine and UI components in core.css and JavaScript.
• Theme overrides for fonts, scaling, and color schemes.
• Separate HTML entry points (index.html for Wortsel, faz.html for FAZ).

License

This project is licensed under MIT + Commons Clause.

You are free to:

• read the code
• clone it
• modify it
• use it for personal, educational, or research purposes

You are not permitted to:

• sell the Software
• use it in commercial products or services
• use it in advertising-supported services
• offer it as SaaS or a white‑label product

All commercial rights remain with the author.

White-Label / Brand Assets

The MIT License applies only to the core codebase of Wortsel.
All third-party brand assets (e.g. FAZ logos, fonts, icons, color palettes, or other partner-specific themes) are not covered by this license.
Such assets remain the property of their respective owners and may only be used with their permission.

Custom white-label deployments (e.g. the FAZ version of Wortsel) are based on the MIT-licensed core, but the branding layers are proprietary and excluded from open-source distribution.

Enjoy playing! 🎉

FAQ

How is Hard Mode different from Wordle’s? NYT Wordle’s hard mode requires using revealed hints but still allows reusing gray letters and placing yellow letters again at the same position. Wortsel’s strict Hard Mode disables gray keys and also forbids repeating a yellow letter at the same position, making it intentionally tougher.

What data does the community stats feature store? Only aggregated counts per solution (attempt buckets 1–6 and fail). No user IDs, IPs, or timestamps are published. The server updates counts atomically and returns the new distribution immediately for display.

Does everything work offline? Gameplay does. Stats and analytics require a connection and are skipped when offline.

How are unfinished games stored?

• Normal games: a single global slot per browser profile. Starting another normal game in a different tab will overwrite this slot with the most recent progress.
• Challenge games (?t=...): saved per word (one slot per challenge). Multiple challenge saves can coexist. Old challenge saves auto-purge after 7 days of inactivity.