Wortiger

About Wortiger

Wortiger is the German weekly DIE ZEIT's answer to Wordle, part of its ZEIT Spiele puzzle section alongside games such as Buchstabiene and Wortgeflecht. The site itself points to Josh Wardle's Wordle as the model, but where Wordle has one five-letter word, Wortiger publishes a new word in each of four lengths every day: seven, six, five and four letters. You switch between them from a menu at the top left of the board.

Each puzzle gives you six tries. You type a word of the right length and submit it, and coloured markings show which letters are in the right place, which are in the word but elsewhere, and which are not in it. The rules also show how repeated letters are marked, so you can tell when a letter appears in the answer more than once.

The word list follows the current edition of the Duden spelling dictionary, in any correct inflected form, including English loanwords that the Duden has taken in. Proper names, abbreviations and words with hyphens or apostrophes are not allowed, and umlauts cannot be typed as AE, OE or UE. If you give up early, the answer is shown, but the game counts as lost.

An archive lets you play earlier days. Most editions are free; subscribers get additional Wortiger editions for 0.99 euros a week, and only logged-in subscribers keep their streaks permanently, while non-subscribers' streaks are capped at 24. It plays in the browser and in the ZEIT app for Android and iOS.

How to play Wortiger

1. Open spiele.zeit.de/wortiger and pick a word length from the menu: 7, 6, 5 or 4 letters.
2. Type any valid German word of that length and press Absenden.
3. Read the colours: right letter in the right place, right letter in the wrong place, or letter not in the word.
4. Use what you learned for your next guess, and find the word within six tries.
5. Move on to the other lengths, or play earlier days from the archive.

Tips

• Start with the four-letter word to warm up, then work up to seven letters.
• Inflected forms count, so a guess like a plural or a conjugated verb is a valid way to test letters.
• Type umlauts as Ä, Ö and Ü; spellings like AE are not accepted.
• Remember that common anglicisms in the Duden can be answers too.

Questions