Alright, so the other day I got this idea stuck in my head β an emoji wordle. You know, like the regular wordle, but with pictures instead of letters. Sounded fun, so I figured, why not try and piece one together myself? Just a little project to see how it’d work.
Getting Started
First thing, I just sat down and thought about the basics. How many emojis? Five seemed like a good number, just like the letters in Wordle. Needed a secret sequence of five emojis. Then the player guesses five emojis. Simple enough, right?
I decided to just use plain web stuff. HTML for the layout, CSS to make it look halfway decent, and JavaScript for the actual game logic. Didn’t want to overcomplicate things, just wanted to see if I could make it function.
The Core Challenge – Emoji Logic
Okay, setting up the grid was easy. Making input boxes that took emojis? A bit fiddly, but doable. The real headache started when I tried to code the guessing logic. How do you tell the computer:
- This emoji is correct and in the right spot (like the green square in Wordle).
- This emoji is in the sequence but in the wrong spot (yellow square).
- This emoji isn’t in the sequence at all (grey square).
Comparing emojis in JavaScript wasn’t as straightforward as comparing letters. Sometimes they look the same but have different underlying codes, especially with skin tones or variations. That took some trial and error. I spent a good chunk of time just getting the comparison part to work reliably. Had to make sure I wasn’t accidentally marking things yellow when they should be green because of duplicates in the guess or the answer.
Building the Interface Bit by Bit
Got the basic logic roughed out. Then I needed to actually show the results. I used simple background colors on the emoji containers. Green for perfect match, yellow for present but wrong spot, and grey for not present. Had to make sure the keyboard (well, an emoji picker or just letting people type/paste them) updated too, showing which emojis were used and their status. That involved manipulating the styles of the emoji buttons after each guess.
Making it playable involved:
- Setting up rows for guesses (six tries felt standard).
- Adding a way to submit the guess.
- Displaying error messages if the guess wasn’t valid (like not enough emojis).
- Handling the win or lose condition at the end.
It was a lot of small steps, connecting the input, the logic, and the display together.
Testing and Fixing (The Fun Part?)
Then came the testing. I’d set a secret code like π Grapes π π π and then try guessing. Oh boy, things broke. Sometimes the colors wouldn’t update right. Sometimes duplicate emojis in the guess messed everything up. Had a weird bug where the yellow indicator was sticky. It took a lot of fiddling with the loops and checks in my JavaScript code, checking conditions carefully, making sure I handled counts of each emoji properly.
I’d fix one thing, test again, find another small issue. Itβs the usual process, really. Annoying at times, but satisfying when you finally squash a bug.
Where I Left It
So, after messing around with it for a bit, I got a basic version working. It picks a random sequence (from a small list I made), you can guess, it shows the colors, and it tells you if you win or lose. It’s not fancy. The emoji list is tiny, and the interface is super basic. But hey, it does the core emoji wordle thing. It was a fun little exercise, mostly figuring out that emoji comparison part and wiring up the visual feedback. Definitely learned a bit more about handling those tricky little pictures in code.