Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Originally written in 2010, but not released, Three Magic Words is a remix of an old game I played with pencil and paper as a child, which we called ”Ghost,” but which also had incarnations as ”Jotto,” the gameshow ”Lingo” and most recently the popular web game ”Wordle.”

What’s the difference between the app and the web edition?

The iOS app was developed and released in late 2021. A purely native app, written in Swift, it offers free unlimited play with a subset of words, and, with an optional in-app purchase, unlimited play with words grouped by difficulty. Each game consists of unlimited rounds until the player has collected nine stars.

The Web Edition, written in TypeScript, was released in February 2022 and offers the free play of daily challenges, which become progressively harder throughout the week. Each game consists of only five rounds, whether or not the player is able to collect a star in a given round. In addition to the daily challenge, the previous five challenges are always available.

What’s in the 3.7K Word Pack in the app version?

The app version of the game comes with 300 starter words of easy and moderate difficulty, offering 100 rounds of play. Purchasing the 3.7K Word Pack gives you over a thousand additional easy words, over a thousand additional moderate words, and hundreds of additional hard words. More words means less frequent repeats and more fun.

Where do the words come from?

The words you must solve were human-compiled, reviewed for recognizability, and categorized for difficulty. The words you are permitted to guess are based on the “SOWPODS” list with some custom additions.