BENGALURU: Everything that is international, gets its own desi twist. And obviously, word game Wordle has not escaped this trend. Thanks to Bengaluru-based Amogha Udupa and Lalith Kumar – students of Masters in Computer Science in New York – who have now come up with a Kannada version of Wordle, called Wordalla. The duo went live during the first week of January and garnered over 2,000 users on the launch day. The concept of the game remains the same, however, it comes with some interesting twists.
According to Udupa, Wordalla is based on the clone of Wordle called ‘Not Wordle’ developed by Hannah Park. The local version can be used with a Kannada keyboard and validation of Kannada letters. “The biggest challenge was to integrate the Kannada language keyboard, after which we worked on changing the colour codes. It was also difficult because Kannada has more alphabets and different combinations of consonants,” says Udupa, adding, “We came up with Wordalla for the love of Kannada. Right now college isn’t so hectic, however, as we get busier, we may not have time to invest in Wordalla.”
Udupa explains that the word validation was done using the words from alar.ink dictionary. Initially, the duo picked some words from the dictionary, but it was complex to solve. “I requested my mother later to share some easy words. Now we have at least 30 words that can sustain us for a while. Since Kannada has combinations of consonants and vowels in each letter, I added a new colour (blue) to indicate that the consonant is in the correct position,” says Udupa.
Upon requests on Twitter, the developers also tweaked certain features of the game by including a four-letter Wordle, which is different from the original one that is available as a five-letter Wordle. Currently, the user base hovers between 1,600 and 1,700 a day with at least 20 per cent of the users from the USA and the rest from India. “The user base will probably remain stagnant over time. But as the craze for Wordle reduces, the users will stop using them. The trend is always temporary and will dilute over a period of time,” says a practical Udupa.
Colour Codes
For Vowels
There are separate indications for vowels and consonants. Correctness of vowels is indicated by the border colour; the green border indicates that the vowel is in the right place.
For the consonants
Wordle’s Avatars