Meet Word-leh, the Singapore-English version of hit game Wordle

The original game has proven so popular that its creator, Ms Sha-Mayn Teh, relaunched the original site on a new domain on Feb 9, 2022. PHOTO: SCREENGRAB FROM WORD-LEH.TIINY.SITE via The Straits Times/Asia News Network

SINGAPORE – Viral word game Wordle has spawned no shortage of copycats, but its latest version will hold particular appeal for Singaporeans: Word-leh, which uses Singlish words.

The game has proven so popular that its creator, Ms Sha-Mayn Teh, relaunched the original site on a new domain, word-leh.com, on Wednesday (Feb 9) afternoon.

Ms Teh, a Singaporean based in New York, said on Twitter that she used an open source clone of the original Wordle game to create the new Singlish one.

Word-leh’s gameplay is virtually identical to Wordle. Every day, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with green blocks indicating a correctly placed guess, while yellow blocks mark out a correct letter in the wrong position.

But where Wordle uses common English words for its solutions, Word-leh invites participants to guess the secret Singlish word, from makan (eat) to bojio (no invitation/missing out).

Singapore actor Hossan Leong was an early ambassador of Word-leh. On Tuesday, he tweeted about it, inviting netizens here to try it out.

Word-leh’s quick success echoes that of Wordle, which was made available to the public only in October last year, yet has already amassed a player base of more than 10 million in January, according to US media outlet Time Magazine.

Since got so many people playing now, I'm relaunching as https://t.co/VgnIEHGWER

— Sha-Mayn Teh (@shamayn) February 9, 2022

Hi friends – @shamayn has relaunched the site as https://t.co/JgzIwQqUhB since it got so popular.
The old link will redirect to the new site. Sorry if it disrupts your streak!

— Hossan Leong (tick myself) (@HossanLeong) February 9, 2022

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