Zidou (粵拼版 Wordle)

About Zidou (粵拼版 Wordle)

Zidou plays Wordle with Cantonese sounds. The answer can be a single character or a word of several syllables, written in Jyutping, the romanisation system for Cantonese, with the tone numbers left out. Every guess has to be five Jyutping letters, such as baasi or ngaan, and you submit it with Enter.

After each guess the tiles change colour: green when the letter is in the answer in that position, yellow when it is in the answer somewhere else, grey when it is not there at all. So the puzzle is as much about how Cantonese syllables are built, an initial such as ng or gw followed by a final, as about vocabulary. The help and the rest of the interface are written in Cantonese, and there are statistics, a dark mode and a colour-blind mode.

The game's credits say the original was designed by Josh Wardle, and that Samuel Lo's Cangjie version, JNDLE, inspired chaaklau to make this Jyutping one. The answer is picked by counting days from a fixed date, so everyone gets the same one each day, and it changes at midnight in your own time zone. It runs in the browser with no account.

How to play Zidou (粵拼版 Wordle)

1. Open Zidou and think of a Cantonese character or word whose Jyutping, without tone numbers, is five letters long.
2. Type it and press ENTER.
3. Read the tiles: green is the right letter in the right place, yellow is in the answer elsewhere, grey is not in the answer.
4. Use the clues to build your next guess from likely initials and finals.
5. Find the answer in six tries or fewer.

Tips

• Jyutping finals such as aa, aai, aang and ing use several letters, so think in syllables rather than single letters.
• An answer can be two short syllables, such as baa plus si, as well as one long one.
• Leave out the tone numbers: only the letters count.

Questions