Cows and Bulls (play-cows-and-bulls.web.app)

Bulls and cows is an old paper game, a word or number version of Mastermind. This free web version keeps the spirit: unlike Wordle, it does not tell you which letters are right, only how many. Each guess must be a real four-letter word with no letter used twice, and the feedback is two counts shown beside the row: bulls for letters in the correct position and cows for letters that are in the word but placed elsewhere.

The daily word comes from a list prepared ahead by date, so everyone playing on the same day is working on the same word, and the welcome screen shows the date and who submitted the day's word. Before the last try, any vowels of the word you have already guessed turn red and you can open a hint, a short clue to the word. Solving it in three tries or fewer earns five stars, and each extra try costs a star.

The game keeps statistics, a guess distribution chart and a history of past days with the stars you earned, and you can share your result. It has a dark theme and works on phones held in portrait and on desktop browsers, where you play with the on-screen keyboard. The game is a one-person project: the credits page thanks the friend who taught the maker the pencil game in college.

It suits players who enjoy logical deduction more than vocabulary, and anyone who found Wordle too forgiving.