Why would you do this?

Or better yet, why would *I* do this? That's a really good question. My wife has asked me the same question.

The Story

Like many others, I came across Wordle and was immediately enthralled. I've loved word games my whole life, and it was just fun to play. And play I did (30+ straight wins). 100% completion rate.

One weekend, I was chatting with my 11 year old who is taking Python programming classes. He's still very, very early in his programming journey. But, I wanted to show him what was possible with programming by actually developing an application and launching it to the public.

So, that night, I decided to hack something together. It was partly to inspire my son, partly to scratch my own itch and partly to help me learn about some newer technologies. I learn by doing. Also, I really love building things. Some people have a woodshop and build cool things with their hands. I don't have that skill. But, I have a MacBook Pro and like to build things with my fingers.

The Launch

The first feature in WordPlay wasn't actually the game, it was called "First Word" -- and it was a tool to help you figure out how "good" your first guess was. But, I soon decided that it's really hard to get better at the game (and pick better words) if you can't actually try it out by *playing* the game. And, as it turns out, writing the app to play the game was easier than the analytics tool to grade your first word. And, so WordPlay was born.