‘Wordle’ Meets ‘Sudoku’ In This Fun, Challenging New Puzzle Game

As someone always on the prowl for new games and new puzzles and new puzzle-games, I was happy to stumble across a Wordle-clone called Numbword. It’s a peculiar name but a very fun, challenging little game.

Numbword was developed by a two-person team in Turkey after one of the members was challenged by a friend to come up with an addictive puzzle game. It combines the 5-letter word guessing of Wordle with the number-puzzling of Sudoku. It’s a simple but elegant hybridization of the games, with a new word to solve every day.

The rules are simple. Every day you start with five empty white boxes, just like Wordle. Unlike Wordle, at the end of these boxes is a number. This number represents the sum of all the letters in the word. Each letter is assigned a value from 1 to 26, so the letter A is worth 1 point and the letter Z is worth 26 points.

Today’s word looks like this:

And below that you’ll find the keyboard with every letter assigned a numerical value:

Now you guess a word. When you type the letters in a total will add up and appear just beneath the correct answer’s number (in this case, 42). Like so:

The idea is to guess words that add up to 42 or as close to that number as possible. You don’t have to guess the exact number, but you’ll lose points for anything that’s above or below it by that amount. So if I guessed slate here I’d lose fifteen points since 57 is fifteen higher than 42:

Note: I would not guess slate here. This is just for illustrative purposes. I would guess something closer to 42 (see below). Still, point loss isn’t a huge concern since you have 100 points to lose before, well, losing. If I were to guess slate I’d be down to 85 points, which is still plenty to get the job done. The penalty gets more severe the further off from the total you go. Unfortunately, guessing slate would only give me one correct letter.

A big difference between Wordle and Numbword is that boxes only come in grey or blue in the latter. A blue box means that the letter is correct but it gives no indication whether that box is in the right spot or not. In Wordle, a green box means the letter is correct and in the right position while a yellow box means the letter is correct but in the wrong position. In Numbword, we just know that it’s correct.

In this word’s case, I would guess something with lower-value letters. 42 is a very low-number word, so guessing mostly letters in the first half of the alphabet makes more sense. Chair might be a good opener here. Whereas a lot of people pick the same word every day in Wordle, it makes no sense to do that here. In Wordle, you go in blind and guess common letters because of that, and words like slate or crane that tend to lower the steps it takes to solve a word. But in Numbword you have information. You know what the total numerical value is and need to work with that knowledge.

Ideally, you’d find a combination of letters that equals 42, but of course there could be other combinations that equal that amount. Sometimes it’s too frustrating to come up with the exact number on your opening guess, and guessing close will likely get you at least a couple correct letters to work with.

Now I’ll show you how I solved today’s Numbword. Spoilers ahead. If you’d like to play the game before seeing today’s solution, you can do that right here.

Here are my guesses for today. I didn’t bother trying to get an exact 42 on my opening guess:

In fact, dream only added up to 41, and cheer was just 39, and if I’d spent more time adding and subtracting I probably could have gotten this in two. But I was fine sacrificing 4 points for the win.

After I guessed cheer I knew four of the five letters and knew the exact value of my next letter. C = 3, E = 5 and R = 18 for a total of 31. 41 – 31 = 11 which has to be the letter K.

From here it was just a matter of juggling letters until I got to creek for the win.

It’s a fun challenge that’s just different enough from Wordle to get the brain juices flowing, but also cozy in its familiarity (and even more so if you play Sudoku). Check out Numbword at its website, where you can play for free.

I also write a daily Wordle guide. Check out today’s right here.

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