How Wordle inspired MojiTiles

In January 2022, it seemed like everyone's social feed was full of little grids of green, yellow and grey squares. Wordle had become the daily ritual of millions of people: one puzzle a day, six tries, and a result to share with friends. A month later, on 27 February 2022, the first game of MojiTiles was played. This is the story of how Wordle inspired MojiTiles, what it borrowed, and what it changed.

The game that made the whole world guess

Wordle was made by Josh Wardle, a software engineer who built it as a gift for his partner, who loved word games. He released it to everyone in October 2021. It had no ads, no app and no account. Just one five-letter word a day, the same for everyone, and six tries to find it.

Then, in December 2021, a small feature changed everything: the share button. Instead of sharing the answer, players shared a grid of coloured emoji squares that showed how they had played, without spoiling the word. Friends saw the grids, got curious and started playing themselves. Within weeks, Wordle went from a few hundred players to millions, and at the end of January 2022 The New York Times bought it.

The lesson was simple and powerful: a small daily game, with a result people want to share, can grow a habit faster than almost any marketing campaign.

An old idea in a new format

Wordle's clues weren't new. They go back to a board game from 1970 called Mastermind, where one player hides a code of coloured pegs and the other has to crack it. After each guess, small black and white pegs show how many colours are in the right place, and how many are in the code but in the wrong place.

That gave us an idea. What if you took the daily format that made Wordle a habit and combined it with the colour code from Mastermind? No words, no dictionary, just colours. And instead of small pegs or grey squares, the clues would be emojis with a bit of personality.

What MojiTiles borrowed from Wordle

MojiTiles kept everything that made Wordle feel so good to play:

• One puzzle a day. There is a new secret code every day, and it is the same for everyone playing. When it's done, it's done until tomorrow.
• Six tries. Enough to think, not enough to guess blindly.
• A shareable result. When you crack the code, you can share your emoji grid with friends, without giving away the answer.
• Streaks and statistics. Games played, win percentage, current streak and best streak, so there is always a reason to come back tomorrow.
• A countdown. Once you have played, a timer shows exactly when the next code arrives.

What MojiTiles changed

Colours instead of letters

A word game only works in one language. MojiTiles uses a secret code of five colours, and a colour can appear more than once. That means anyone can play, whatever language they speak. A player in Copenhagen and a player in São Paulo can solve exactly the same puzzle and compare their results.

Emojis that live, love and laugh

Instead of green, yellow and grey squares, every guess is answered with an emoji:

• 😎 the colour is in the code and in the right place,
• 😍 the colour is in the code, but in the wrong place,
• 😂 the colour is not in the code at all.

Behind the scenes, the three emojis have always been called live, love and laugh, and the original game signed off with #LiveLoveLaugh. A shared MojiTiles result looks like a little story of emotions, from laughing at a bad first guess to the cool sunglasses of a cracked code.

Practice before it counts

Wordle throws you straight in. In MojiTiles, new players get two practice rounds first, so they learn the rules before today's code counts. And once today's code is done, they can keep practising for as long as they like.

Four levels of difficulty

Some people want a relaxed puzzle with their morning coffee. Others want a real challenge. MojiTiles has four levels: Normal, Medium, Hard and Ninja. In Ninja mode, all the colours look the same until the game is over, so you have to remember which key is which.

A currency worth exactly nothing

Every win earns Moji-Mock coins, and harder levels earn more. What can you use them for? Not a thing. What is the ratio of Moji-Mock coins to Mock-Dollars? The same as the ratio of unicorns to leprechauns. It's a small joke, but players love watching the price go up and down.

A game everyone can play

Not everyone sees colours the same way. That is why MojiTiles can show numbers on the colours. On your own website, you switch them on in your dashboard, so colour-blind visitors can crack the code too.

From one website to every website

Since that first game in February 2022, people have played around 15,000 games of MojiTiles. Every day, some of them came back for the next code, just like with Wordle. That habit is exactly what most websites are missing.

So we asked a new question: what if any website could have its own daily puzzle? Today MojiTiles is a widget you can add to your own website with one line of code. It opens from a small button in the corner, uses your brand colour and font, and every shared result carries your website's address. Webshops can even give winners a discount code, so cracking the code means getting a code. You can read more about that in A daily Wordle-style puzzle for your website, and about why small games work so well for shops in 6 benefits of gamification for webshops.

If your visitors prefer numbers to colours, Code Breaker uses the same clever clues with digits instead.

Try it yourself

The best way to understand MojiTiles is to play it. Try today's code on the MojiTiles page, and see if you can crack it in fewer than six tries. When you are ready to add it to your own website, our guide How to add a game to your website shows you how, step by step.

Create your free account and give your visitors a reason to come back tomorrow. 😎😍😂