What is Word code?
The word code plays Code Breaker with letters. The codemaker picks a secret word, four letters long unless you choose 3, 5 or 6 letters, and the codebreaker guesses words of the same length. Only words from the site's word list count, for the secret and for every guess, so you cannot test letters with a made-up string such as AEIO.
The feedback is sharper than in the colour game. Instead of a count of black and white pegs, every letter of the guess gets its own mark: in the right place, in the word but somewhere else, or not in the word at all. A repeated letter is marked as being elsewhere only as many times as the secret still holds it: with secret RAIN, the guess AREA marks the first A as elsewhere and the second A as absent, because RAIN has only one A.
You win by guessing the word itself within the guess limit. The word list is in English.
Rule changes
| Rule | Standard Code Breaker | Word code |
|---|---|---|
| Symbols | Standard Code BreakerSix colours of pegs. | Word codeThe 26 letters A to Z. |
| Allowed codes | Standard Code BreakerAny row of four colours. | Word codeOnly words from the site's English word list, for the secret and for every guess. |
| Feedback | Standard Code BreakerA count: a black peg for each right colour in the right place, a white peg for each right colour in the wrong place, without saying which pegs earned them. | Word codeA mark on every letter: in the right place, elsewhere in the word, or not in it. A repeated letter is marked elsewhere only as often as the secret still holds it. |
| Repeated symbols | Standard Code BreakerA colour may appear more than once. | Word codeLetters repeat as they do in words: LOOK and SEED are fine. |
| Code length | Standard Code Breaker4 pegs. | Word code4 letters, or 3, 5 or 6 with the code length option. |
| Other options | Standard Code Breaker10 guesses, six colours, repeated colours allowed and no blanks. | Word codeThe guess limit of 6, 8, 10 or 12 still applies. Colour count, no duplicates and blanks belong to the colour game and are not offered. |
History
Word versions of the code-breaking game are almost as old as the peg game itself. A four-letter word edition of the board game, in which only real words could be set and guessed, appeared in 1972, and Bulls and Cows has long been played with words as well as numbers.
An older relative is Jotto, invented by Morton M. Rosenfeld in 1955: each player hides a five-letter word, and a guess learns only how many letters it shares with the secret, not where they stand. Marking every letter separately, as this page does, was the core of the television game show Lingo, first broadcast in the United States on 28 September 1987, where letters lit up to show whether they were in the right place, elsewhere in the word or not in it.