What Spellie Is#
Spellie is a daily word game designed for young spellers, and it publishes three puzzles every day instead of one. Easy uses four-letter words drawn from roughly Grade 2 vocabulary and is aimed at kindergarten through second grade; Medium moves to five-letter words around a Grade 3 level; Hard uses six-letter words that a Grade 5 student can spell but that give adults a real puzzle. Each mode gives you six tries, with feedback marking letters that are correctly placed, in the word but misplaced, or absent — rendered in a brighter, friendlier palette than Wordle's.
Spellie launched in early 2022 and credits three creators in its About screen: Christopher Porter, David Hirtle, and James Dodds. Press coverage at launch described Porter, a Vancouver software developer, building it after playing Wordle with his own kids. The game is also open source, with its code public on GitHub under a noncommercial license.
How to Play#
Pick a difficulty and guess the word within six tries, using the feedback to narrow options. Around that Wordle core, nearly everything is softened for kids: letters can be typed in any order rather than strictly left to right, tiles can display uppercase or lowercase, the keyboard can be switched to alphabetical order, and a settings option accepts guesses that are not in the dictionary so an inventive speller is not stonewalled by rejected words. Easy and Medium include a hint button that nudges a helpful letter when a child is stuck. For grown-ups helping out, the best move is usually to let the feedback do the teaching — the deduction loop is the lesson.
The Emoji Collection#
Spellie's signature reward system is a collection of more than 600 emojis. Guessing certain words unlocks their matching emoji even when they are not the day's answer — spell BACON and the bacon emoji joins the collection — which quietly rewards experimentation and vocabulary breadth rather than just solving. It turns six guesses a day into an ongoing scavenger hunt through a kid's spelling vocabulary, and it is the reason many young players keep guessing after the puzzle is already won.
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Frequently Asked Questions#
What ages is Spellie for?
The Easy puzzle targets roughly K-2 with four-letter, Grade 2-level words; Medium suits around Grade 3 with five-letter words; Hard uses six-letter words a Grade 5 student can spell but is genuinely challenging for adults.
How is Spellie different from Wordle for a young child?
Six tries like Wordle, but with shorter starter words, hints, letters that can be typed in any order, uppercase or lowercase tiles, an optional alphabetical keyboard, and emoji rewards for creative guesses.
More Games Like Spellie#
Wordle without the once-a-day limit: pick any word length from four to eleven letters and play as many rounds as you like.
No coloured tiles: each guess only narrows where the target sits alphabetically between your words.
Six words baked into a waffle-shaped grid arrive pre-scrambled; you have 15 swaps to set them all straight, and five stars means a perfect solve.
Or browse all of them on our games like Wordle.
Daily Puzzles, Our Way
Play today's NerdleBuddy puzzle, or use the Classic Nerdle solver to choose a next guess from your tile feedback.