Wordle: The Party Game is not really the first Wordle board game

On Thursday, The New York Times and Hasbro announced: Wordle: the board game, a $20 physical version of the viral web game hit that will be available in October. But this new game is far from the first that essentially allows players to “play” wordle in real life,” as the marketing copy promises.

Aside from the obvious change in medium, Wordle: the board game differs from its digital inspiration primarily through multiplayer gameplay designed for two to four players (recommended for ages 14 and up, according to the manufacturer). In the most basic game mode, players alternate as the “host” who gets to choose a secret five-letter word – don’t worry, CNN reports that the game comes with “an official word list to use, compiled by the Times” if you can’t think of it yourself.

The non-host player then uses an enclosed game board to guess the host’s secret word. Then the host marks letters using translucent green and yellow tiles – following the pattern of the digital game – to respectively indicate letters that are in the correct place and letters that appear elsewhere in the secret word. Players receive points based on the number of guesses it takes to find the secret word.

What word am I thinking of?

Although this is the first officially branded wordle product available in the physical world, a long line of similar and nearly identical board games has led to the release of Wordle: the board game.

In any case, basic code guessing games can be traced back to: Bulls and Cows, a public domain pen-and-paper game that at least one source suggests has been around for “a century or more.” In this game, players guess at a secret four-digit number and are given clues that tell them how many digits are in the correct position (bulls) or present, but in the wrong position (cows).

enlarge / An example game of jotto shows how basic word guessing works.

In 1955, the release of pen and paper game jotto changed the betting target from a secret number to “every five letter word in the dictionary, except capitalized words and those designated as foreign words,” as the official rules put it. In jotto, two players would take turns guessing each other’s secret words, scoring “jots” (and crucial information) based on how many letters in their guess appeared anywhere in the opponent’s secret word. There were even more points available to guess the complete word as quickly as possible.

1973, scrabblecreator Selchow and Righter would create their own version of jotto. However, around the same time, Parker Brothers expanded the concept a bit with Word mastermind.

Just like the original color-based Brain (or Cows and bulls before), in Word mastermind players are given two pieces of information after each guess: how many letters are in the right place and how many letters are in the wrong place.

Word mastermind appeared in many versions over the years, with many different languages, word lengths and other names, such as: Call my bluff and What’s my word? But the original Word mastermind is probably my favorite of these just because of the bright yellow letter tiles sticking out of the board and almost screaming “I’m from the 70s” like they do.