A phonetic Wordle

In an earlier column I wrote about the game Wordle from the perspective of how replications and spin-offs have used parts of the game’s name (Quordle, Absurdle, and so on). Well, I have done it myself. Let me introduce Phonzerdle.

This variant has the same format as the original Wordle, with five character positions and up to six guesses. Its difference is that it is based not on spelling, but on pronunciation. My primary goal was to develop a phonetics teaching resource for linguistics courses, as it encourages students to think of words not in terms of their letters but their sounds. I have, however, been surprised at the amount of interest from my non-linguist friends.

I constructed Phonzerdle

(pronounced fonn-zer-dle) using a generous open-source resource for Wordle clones, Anylanguage-wordle. The idea behind Anylanguage-wordle is simple – you add your own dictionary and alphabet to a basic structure already programmed in computer code. The dictionary has a long list of possible words of the right length, from which the target words are selected for players to solve.

Phonzerdle uses a list of phoneticallytranscribed words. Some were generously provided by my colleague Catherine Watson at the University of Auckland. Most resulted from my ‘translation’ of words in an open-source list from their original standard southern British English transcription, modifying them to the New Zealand English (NZE) accent and using a transcription system (PHONZE) which we have developed in the linguistics programme at Victoria University.

Phonzerdle’s alphabet is the IPA – not the beer, but the International Phonetic Alphabet. Our students are expected to study and assimilate the IPA – again, not the beer. In particular, we get them started on transcribing using phonetic symbols the variety of English (NZE) they are likely to be familiar with or at least to hear around them.

Something we hope Phonzerdle will be particularly helpful for is getting students to think in terms of sounds and not spellings: panic and horseshoe look very different in terms of their lengths, but they both have five phonemes (distinct speech sounds).

My own experiences in constructing Phonzerdle and then testing it by playing the game have reminded me just how

ought, cough, rough, through, thorough, though, bough, or the pronunciation differences in words related to one another like sign and signal, or the different pronunciations of -ed in moved, jumped, wanted.

Another issue for our students is lack of familiarity with the IPA (the alphabet, not beer). To help them, I have added a selectable ‘‘key tips’’ feature, which produces pop-up guides on the sounds represented by some of the more unusual phonetic symbols. My hope is that they will learn the symbols and eventually not need the ‘‘key tips’’.

A further deviation from the standard Wordle game is that Phonzerdle is available in two modes. One is the usual one of a new word each day, so that players can compare how they did. The other is a practice mode, where a new word is introduced when the app or browser window is refreshed.

Interested? Go to intro2psycholing.net/ Phonzerdle_daily. As well as the game, you will find some help and instructions.