Wordiply: All About The Guardian’s New Daily Word Game

Wordiply colored squares

Created by WordFinder

You might remember when Wordle became a huge pop culture phenomenon in early 2022: No less because of how much we’ve talked about it. Now The Guardian is throwing their hat in the daily word game ring with Wordiply, but can it successfully capture the same kind of viral triumph as its New York Times’ predecessor?
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Wordiply does have an advantage: It isn’t like all the other “guess a five-letter word” daily word game spinoffs inspired by Wordle. Instead, it’s all about trying to come up with the longest word possible from a short starting word. Think it sounds fun? Let’s take a closer look at what might become the Wordle of 2023. 

What Is the Wordiply Word Game?

Unlike Wordle, which was independently developed by Josh Wardle before he sold it to The New York Times, Wordiply started from the beginning as a project by The Guardian. The newspaper wanted to capture the public’s fascination the same way that Wordle did, tasking editor David Shariatmadari to come up with the concept.

After investigating reasons why Wordle worked and bouncing around a few ideas, Shariatmadari got the basic idea behind the new Wordiply word game from his brother. There’s no app to download, just like Wordle. Just point your web browser to the Wordiply site each day, complete the game, and share your score on social media to see how your friends and family did.

How Do You Play Wordiply?

All Wordle answers are five-letter words and you get six guesses each day to get it. With Wordiply, the goal is to come up with the longest word that you can based on the starter word.

  1. Look at the starter word of the day. They’re usually three-letter words, but some days have four-letter words.

  2. Think of the longest word you can that contains the starter word with the letters exactly in that order.

  3. You get five turns in Wordiply and you should use all five.

Try to come up with 15 letter words (or longer!) if you can. You will see a small circle fill-up next to your word as you type it, indicating its length.

How Does the Wordiply Scoring System Work?

Your Wordiply score consists of two parts:

  • Length Score: The closer you are the longest word, the higher this percentage will be. For example, if the longest word is 15 letters and your best word is 12 letters long, you get a score of 80% (12 divided by 15). 

  • Letter Score: Add up the total number of letters you use across all five guesses to get your letter score. For example, if you come up with five 12 letter words, your letter score would be 60. 

Why Is Wordiply Different From Other Word Games?

With the vast majority of daily word games inspired by the success of Wordle, there is a single answer you’re trying to guess each day. That’s also true with Contexto, even if that game is about semantic co-occurrence and not about how words are spelled. And even in the case of games like Quordle and Octordle, where you’re trying to identify multiple words, there is one set solution. Given this, Wordiply is different in at least two key ways.

First, there can be multiple “correct” answers, as more than one 15-letter word could contain the starter word, for example. This allows for greater creativity. Second, even if you don’t get the “right” Wordiply answer, you can still finish the daily game and get both your length score and letter score to share online. This is quite unlike failing to beat Wordle and receiving a score of X/6 as a loss. 

How to Win at Wordiply: Strategies and Tips

Using one of the best Wordle starting words as your first word in that game can make a world of difference. The more yellow and green squares you can identify, the more likely you’ll be able to solve the daily Wordle in as few guesses as possible. Contexto strategies work in a similar kind of way. 

Winning at Wordiply, though, requires a totally different kind of mindset. So, you’ll want to try some different Wordiply tips and strategies to find the longest word(s) possible.

  • Think beginning, middle and end: The starter word can appear anywhere in your word. So, consider words that might start with, contain or end with those letters.

  • Expand in meaning: You can think about the starter word as a root word, but also as part of a larger word. For example, you can expand “con” into “conserve” or “lexicon.”

  • Add in prefixes and suffixes: Remember the goal is to create the longest word possible and not necessarily the most unique. Using the example of turning “con” into “conserve” above, you can keep add more suffixes until you end up with “conservatorship.”

  • Pluralize if possible: Adding an S or ES at the end of the word might only give you one or two more letters, but it’s still one or two more letters. “Conservatorship” is already very good at 15 letters, but “conservatorships” is 16 letters long.

  • Get WordFinder help: Enter the Wordiply starter word in the “contains” advanced search field of our word finder tool and you’ll get all the words with those letters in them. Be sure to select “all games” for the biggest word list, including up to 21-letter words! 

Adding to the Daily Game Routine

Word games are as popular as ever. Even though the Wordle trend isn’t as hot as it was in early 2022, it continues to attract a loyal and dedicated fan base, including players who keep seeking new games to add to their daily routine. From Canuckle to Contexto, and now Wordiply too, word game fans have plenty of chances to flex their lexicographically oriented prowess. (That’s a 17-letter word!)

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