Cyrdle: The Welsh language alternative to Wordle taking the internet by storm

Stephen Price

A father from Brecon who helped campaign for Welsh language teaching provision for the Powys town has created a Welsh language alternative to Wordle.

Laine Skinner, who is a Yoga Instructor and AI developer, created popular web-based app, Cyrdle, to help his family with their Welsh learning, and to integrate Welsh language activities into their home life.

Cyrdle is a play on the word ‘Wordle’ – named after the globally popular Wordle, and Cymraeg.

Bringing Welsh home

Just as with Wordle, Cyrdle asks players to guess a five-letter word. It then tells you whether any of the letters are in the secret word and if they are in the correct order.

The major difference in Cyrdle is that players have five guesses before being timed out – and the letters use the Welsh-language alphabet.

Laine and his wife, Sara, had noticed that, despite choosing Welsh for their son’s education, most of their activities at home had an English language setting – whether it’s game playing, television or socialising with friends from other schools.

As a fan of Wordle, which was set up by Wales-born software engineer Josh Wardle, Laine hit on the idea of creating a Welsh version, and the rest is history.

“Refreshing”

Laine, Cyrdle’s founder shared: “Cryptic word games, crosswords or language puzzles were never really my thing. It wasn’t really anything my kids were into either (when they were younger or as teenagers now).

“But the huge success of Joss Wardle’s ‘WORDLE’ app kind of changed all of that.

“He’s not the first, but coming along with such a clean and elegant game, that doesn’t suck up hours of your time, was very refreshing. Most importantly though, it captured the attention of my kids (14 and 16) and my wife…so I had to get involved.”

“At around this time, we had also been fighting for Welsh language provision in the Brecon area.

“Although neither myself or Sara speak Welsh, we’ve lived in Brecon all of our lives (and our parents, their parents, etc.) and we were very keen on giving our children a deep connection with the culture of Wales.

“So Welsh speaking primary and secondary schools were an obvious choice. But can we get them to speak Welsh at home? Not a chance!

“So I thought a Welsh version of wordle might do the trick! And of course it did, they came up with many of the words in the word list, and had a good laugh at my attempt at the rest of the welsh words.

“To have other people enjoy the game everyday was also very nice to see, although I didn’t expect there to be any real interest.

“So all things considered, it was a great success! The boys were engaged, Sara enjoyed the challenge and I got to do some geeky-web site work in the welsh language.”

Revived interest

With Cyrdle mastered, Laine also started a new hobby of ultra-running.

He shared: “From a non-running person, that was quite the journey, from couch-2-5k to running from Brecon to Cardiff…very slowly mind)

He’s now a yoga teacher in his spare time, an AI developer in his day job…and he wrote about it all in a book too.

“Remarkable”

Julie Brominicks and her partner Rob Nicklen, as well as Julie’s brother Mark Bromilow have been big fans of Cyrdle since its creation.

Rob (who sets cryptic crosswords in his spare time) particularly likes the problem-solving nature of Cyrdle. And learning the words helps him solve future words – having a bank of known words and the way the language works so he can make educated guesses as to future words.

Rob shared: “When I started every guess was difficult because I had no words to put in. Whereas now I know at least 6 Welsh words.”

Meanwhile, Mark is a bit of a quiz fiend. He has several he solves every morning on his phone before breakfast.

Mark added: “On a recent holiday to Tenby I was introduced to Cyrdle by my brother in law.

“I have since been doing the quiz daily and to my surprise have been completing it nearly every day. This is mainly down to the using the same 4 or 5 words to eliminate most of the alphabet, a method some use on Wordle.

“Even with most letters eliminated it still requires some knowledge or learning of Welsh word structure to get the correct word with the few remaining letters.

“Remembering the road signs from numerous trips to Wales helps but so does the DD’s, FF’s and the LL’s. The more I play Cyrdle the more I see the structure of the language. Maybe it’s not so ridiculous after all, as an Englishman speaking.

“Learning languages isn’t something I’d normally do, other than learning some basic phrases for trips abroad. Having been born and bred 10 miles from the Welsh border I’m quite ashamed never to have taken the same approach when visiting Wales.

“So to be learning some Welsh words from a silly little quiz is remarkable. You don’t always need an YSGOL to learn.”

Laine said: “Cyrdle has the same simple straightforward layout you’d find in Wordle. It’s one word per day and it doesn’t destroy your brain.

“It has definitely helped me with my Welsh and has revived my interest in learning the language.”

Find out more about Cyrdle here.