Instructions
How to play Verdle
Verdle hides one Singlish or Manglish word a day. You have six guesses to find it.
The rules
- Type a guess and press Enter. It must have the day’s number of letters, which changes every day from four to seven. The board is set to that width.
- Any spelling goes. Singlish and Manglish have no fixed spelling, so guess the way you’d type it: syok, shiok, an English word or a hunch.
- Read the ink. After each guess, every letter is pressed in one of three inks:
- Verdigris: the letter is in the word and in the right place.
- Ochre: the letter is in the word, somewhere else.
- Graphite: the letter isn’t in the word at all.
- Win or lose, learn the word. When the game ends, Verdle prints what the word means, an example of how it’s used and where it comes from.
A worked example
Say the word is SALAH (Malay for “wrong”). A first guess of HALUS prints A and L in verdigris (right letters, right places), H and S in ochre (both are in SALAH, just not where you put them) and U in graphite.
More to know
- One edition a day. Everyone gets the same word, and a new one is printed at midnight Singapore time, at the same moment everywhere.
- Streaks. Solving the day’s word on consecutive days builds your streak. Your record, the Ledger, stays in your browser.
- Back issues. Missed a day? Every earlier edition is still playable in the back issues. They don’t touch your streak.
- Hard mode. Turn it on in Set: every hint you’ve been given must be used in your later guesses.
- Easy mode. Turn it on in Set for a crossword-style clue above the board. Your streak still counts, and your share says “easy”.
- Spicy edition (18+). A separate daily word of vulgar Hokkien, Cantonese and Malay, with its own streak, for adults only.
Stuck? There are tips drawn from the word list.