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  Wordle · 2026-08-18

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Guess tiles are green / yellow / grey; the on-screen keyboard uses two greys — light for unused letters, dark for ones you've tried.

Features

• Plays today's real Wordle — the answer is read from NYT's public puzzle feed.
• Play any past puzzle from the archive with --date.
• Practice mode with shareable codes so friends can race on the same word.
• Hard mode — revealed hints must be reused in later guesses.
• Live QWERTY tracker beside the board.
• Real-word validation against a bundled list of ~15,000 words.
• Shareable result grid in the familiar copy-paste format.
• Accessible — colourblind (blue/orange) and no-colour modes, plus NO_COLOR support.
• Configurable defaults via a simple config file.
• Clean ANSI colours, and zero dependencies — pure Python standard library.

Installation

From PyPI (recommended):

pip install nyt-wordle-cli

Or with pipx to keep it isolated as a global command:

pipx install nyt-wordle-cli

Then run:

wordle

Usage

wordle                       # play today's puzzle
wordle --hard                # hard mode
wordle --practice            # offline game; prints a code you can share
wordle --practice K7Q2MX     # play a friend's code (same word)
wordle -n                    # hide the keyboard tracker
wordle --hint                # print a small hint, then exit
wordle --solve               # reveal today's answer, then exit

Play with a friend

Practice mode plays a word offline and prints a short code. Anyone who runs the same code gets the same word, so you can compete:

wordle --practice            # you: prints e.g. "K7Q2MX" and starts a game
wordle --practice K7Q2MX     # a friend: same code, same word

The code is deliberately unrelated to the word — it is mapped through a hash, so the code reveals nothing about the answer. Codes are case- and dash-insensitive (k7q2-mx works too).

Sharing your result

After each game, wordle-cli prints a result grid you can paste anywhere:

Wordle 1,234 4/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛🟩
⬛⬛🟨🟩🟩
🟨⬛🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Configuration

Set defaults so you don't retype flags. Create ~/.config/wordle/config.ini (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wordle/config.ini):

[wordle]
hard = false
colorblind = false
color = true
keyboard = true

Command-line flags always override the config file.

How it works

The daily answer is read from NYT's public puzzle endpoint — https://www.nytimes.com/svc/wordle/v2/<date>.json — which is the same JSON your browser downloads before you type a guess. wordle-cli just reads the solution field. Practice mode never touches the network: it draws from a bundled, curated answer list and derives the word from your share code.

Development

git clone https://github.com/NathanWalash/wordle-cli.git
cd wordle-cli
pip install -e ".[dev]"      # or: pip install -e . pytest
pytest

The test suite covers scoring (including duplicate-letter rules), guess and hard-mode validation, the share grid, and the deterministic share-code mapping. CI runs it on Python 3.9 through 3.12.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please keep changes focused and make sure pytest passes before opening a PR.

License

MIT