Before Wordle: DEC’s 1973 BASIC “WORD” and the Roots of Guessing Games
Read ArticleRead Original Articleadded Nov 7, 2025November 7, 2025
A Wordle-like game, WORD, was published by DEC in 1973, predating Lingo and modern Wordle by decades. The article traces WORD’s lineage through a vibrant ecosystem of early BASIC guessing games that thrived due to their simplicity and hardware-friendly design. It concludes that these classics are still playable and ripe for contemporary revival.
Key Points
- A Wordle-like game called WORD was published in 1973 by DEC; it mirrors Wordle’s letter/position feedback, was authored by Charles Reid, had only 12 words, and is now public domain and playable online.
- Guessing games flourished in early BASIC because their hidden-information-plus-clue loops were easy to implement on limited hardware.
- The foundational GUESS (Walt Koetke) inspired many successors; Dennis Allison’s 1975 call to “Build Your Own BASIC” prominently featured such guessing games.
- The genre included many variants—HI-LO, NUMBER, STARS, TRAP, BAGELS, LETTER, HURKLE, MUGWMP, and combat-themed titles like TARGET—spanning numeric, grid, and strategy twists.
- Reverse guessing games (e.g., ANIMAL, SALVO, DIGITS, NICOMA) were harder due to knowledge and memory constraints, but examples existed and are also playable in-browser today.
Sentiment
The overall sentiment of the Hacker News discussion is neutral and supplemental, primarily enriching the article's historical narrative by introducing an even earlier, non-computer predecessor to the Wordle-style game mechanics, rather than directly refuting the article's main claim about early computer implementations.
In Agreement
- The discussion implicitly acknowledges the existence and historical relevance of WORD as an early computer game, as presented by the article, including providing a link to play it.
Opposed
- The board game Mastermind, created in 1970, is identified as an even earlier precursor to the core Wordle-style mechanics than the 1973 WORD computer program, pushing the origin of the game concept further back in time to a non-digital format.