Vancouver man makes kid-friendly version of Wordle

Christopher Porter's daughter looked forward to guessing her five letter Wordle each day, but he says words like "cynic" and "ulcer" weren't coming to her, so he and a friend, a software engineer like himself, decided to co-create a new game called Spellie.

"I think the third day we tried it together, "proxy" came up and I was like, that's it, we need to build a Wordle junior version," he said.

Wordle is a popular online word game launched last October by U.S. software engineer Josh Wardle who wanted to make a new game for his wife. Players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with colour-coded feedback given for each guess.

Now, millions play it every day.

Porter says he and his daughter started to play Wordle as a bonding exercise.

"This game has so much there."

But words like "query" and "proxy" weren't easy for his daughter to guess. And so, Spellie was born.

Porter says the rules are the same but the words, like "dream, "love" and "flower," are simpler.

"The word list is inherently smaller. These are all words that any Grade 3 or Grade 4 student can understand."

Porter says they have only been working on it for a month and already there are nearly 6,000 online users a day. He says they never intended for it to be this big.

"We really just wanted to build something that our friends and family and our own kids would enjoy playing." 

Mostly, people have been finding out about it by word of mouth, he says.

Wardle just sold Wordle to The New York Times for seven figures.

Porter says he can't see himself selling it … unless maybe he's offered seven figures.

"You never say no, but our intention is to keep this free and ad-free," he said. "We're just trying to bring joy to families and young spellers."