About Languagle
Languagle is a daily puzzle about the world's languages. Each day it shows one real phrase, written in its own script, and you have six guesses to name the language. Every wrong guess tells you how far away you are on the map, so a miss still points you somewhere.
Who makes it
Languagle is a solo project curated by Matt Scotting. I've put together a 500-day schedule of phrases, expressions, idioms and proverbs from all the major spoken languages. My hope is that it gets shared and enjoyed by everyone who's into daily challenges.
Languagle takes the one-puzzle-a-day format of Wordle and the map-based clues of Worldle and points them at something most of us never learn: telling the world's languages and writing systems apart just by looking at them.
Where the phrases come from
The game draws on more than 590 phrases across over 180 languages. Most are traditional proverbs; where a language's proverbs were never reliably written down, it uses a short line of recorded oral poetry, a well-known word, or an everyday phrase instead, and says so.
Every phrase is checked before it goes into the game:
- It has a real source. Old published proverb collections, university and dictionary sources, and national language bodies come first. Each phrase links to where it came from, on the day and in the archive.
- It is written the way native speakers write it, in the language's own script, and the translation is checked against the source rather than written from memory.
- No invented "ancient wisdom". The internet is full of made-up proverbs credited to small languages, often from mass-produced books and quote sites. Those sources are ruled out entirely, and if a phrase's origin is not documented, the game says that rather than inventing a story for it.
How the daily puzzle works
There is one puzzle a day for everyone, and it changes at midnight UTC. The running order is planned in advance: the first weeks lean towards languages a new player can win, the difficulty builds over the months after that, and the same distinctive script never comes up twice in one week, so each day brings something new to look at. The full rules and what the coloured clues mean are on the How to Play page.
Once a day has been played, its answer, phrase, translation and background are added to the answer archive, which grows by one entry every day.
Free to play
Languagle has no accounts, no sign-up and no paywall. Your streak and stats stay on your own device (the privacy policy has the details). Advertising on the site helps pay for running it.
Get in touch
Spotted a mistake in a phrase or a translation? Speak a language that is in the game, or one you'd like to see added? I read everything, and corrections from native speakers are the most useful messages I get.
Email: mattscottingdesign@gmail.com
Community: r/LanguagleGame on Reddit