Michael Lacock's Wordle Clone Pops the Guessing Game in Your Pocket, on an Adafruit Clue

Maker Michael Lacock has popped a clone of the popular guessing game Wordle in his pocket, recreating it in portable form for Adafruit's micro:bit-inspired Clue development board.

Originally written by Josh Wardle for partner Palak Shah, Wordle proved a smash hit when released to the public thanks to its one-a-day pick-up-and-play mechanism and simplicity: Just figure out a five-letter word in under six tries — and share your progress on social media via a colorful block diagram, helping the game go viral.

Wordle became so popular, in fact, that it's now been picked up by the New York Times for an undisclosed sum in the "low seven figures" — but Lacock's version won't cost you a penny.

"This project is a clone of the very popular word solving puzzle game Wordle," Lacock explains of his creation, "made for the Adafruit Clue hardware running Circuit Python 7.x.x. You can cycle though the letters with the Clue's 'A' button and confirm the choice with the 'B' button."

For those who would rather not enter their guesses in two-button mode, the port also supports a hardware keyboard add-on dubbed Project Open-Blue — designed to Lacock to interface recycled BlackBerry 10 keyboards with the Adafruit Clue or BBC micro:bit, based on earlier work by arturo182.

The source code for the project has been published to GitHub under an unspecified open source license.