Tap or drag a letter to put it in
Guess the word
Stars
⭐ 0
Spelldle is a word-guessing game for children. There is a hidden word and a handful of goes to find it. Tap a letter in the tray, or drag it into the square you want, and the moment the row is full every letter comes back coloured: green means that letter is in the word and in the right place, amber means it is in the word somewhere else, and grey means it is not in the word at all. Work out what fits, guess again, and the word usually falls out in three or four tries.
There is nothing to press to check a word and nothing to press to delete one. A tap puts the letter in the next empty square; a drag puts it exactly where you want it. Put the wrong letter down and you fix it the same way you put it there: another letter on top takes its place.
How many goes you get depends on the word. A three-letter word gives four, and it climbs to six for the longest ones, which is where Wordle's own number comes from. Six goes at a three-letter word out of a six-letter tray is not really a puzzle, and six rows over three squares is a very tall thing to put on a small screen.
A letter you have already got in the right place stays there. It appears in the next row already green, and the only squares left to fill are the ones still to work out, so nobody drags the same right answer in six times over. A letter that is in the word but in the wrong square does not carry, because where it goes is still the puzzle.
The tray is not the whole alphabet. It holds the hidden word's own letters mixed in with wrong ones, in alphabetical order, so a four-year-old is choosing between six letters rather than hunting through twenty-six. It gives away the letters and nothing else: the order is still theirs to find, so is which of the letters are the wrong ones, and a letter is never used up, so a word with a double letter in it gives nothing away.
What makes it different from the grown-up version is where the words come from. Spelldle draws only on the words a child's own school year has been taught, from the same curriculum-matched word data behind Fredle and Tick or Fix. A child in Reception is guessing three-letter words built from the first sounds they know. A child in Year 6 is guessing six-letter words drawn from the statutory spelling lists. Nobody is asked for a word their class has not met.
The word gets one letter longer each time a new word list opens for that school year, so the board widens as the child moves up the school:
The tray grows with the word. It always holds every letter of the hidden word plus at least as many wrong ones, so an older child has more to sift through as well as more to spell. Earning stars adds another wrong letter at each step.
It also shrinks as the child works. A letter a guess has proved is not in the word leaves the tray and the rest close up over it, so what is on screen is always what is still worth trying. Every key that is left looks the same: all the colour is on the board, where the guesses are, rather than repeated underneath them.
Set the school year from the flag badge at the top of the screen. It is the one setting this game has, and it is shared with every other Tadpole game, so a child only ever tells us their year once. Countries other than the United Kingdom are matched to their own curriculum: see how the years line up.
Guessing a word from partial letters is a decoding and spelling exercise wearing a puzzle costume. To use an amber letter a child has to try it in a different position and read back whether the result sounds like a word. To rule a letter out they have to hold what they already know about the word in their head. It rewards sounding out, and it punishes guessing at random, which is exactly the balance a phonics lesson is after.
Spelldle never reads the word out. Working it out is the whole exercise, so the only voice in the phonics games is the one that arrives after a child has given up, in Fredle.
Is it one puzzle a day? No. A new word arrives as soon as the last one is finished, so a child who is enjoying it can keep going.
Does a guess have to be a real word? No. The tray only holds a handful of letters, so insisting on a real word would leave a child stuck with nothing they could legally put down. Any arrangement is scored, and the colours are what do the teaching.
Where do the words come from? The same place every Tadpole word comes from. Read how the words are chosen for the full account of the phonics lists, the published spelling lists, the age check and the safety veto.
Spelldle is part of the Tadpole Games family. If your child likes it, try Fredle, where they trace words out of a letter grid, or Spell Duel, where they spell a word before it lands.