Over 300,000 people play Wordle every day according to The New York Times. The popular daily word game gives players six chances to guess a five letter word. Some players have gone beyond the basic functions though and have unique ways to use the Wordle.

Danielle Matej, Spanish teacher, uses a custom Wordle generator to give her class Spanish Wordles.

“I started it when [Wordle] started becoming really big. So I started just posting a couple a day, and I did post them as a secret and then sometimes I post them just for fun,” Matej said.

Wordle is not everyone’s thing, Matej said. Some students took to it, others did not enjoy the game as much.

“A couple of kids really liked it. I just kept it simple, nothing too complicated. I tried not to do any double letters just because it is another language,” Matej said. “But it was always stuff off their vocab list. It was just something fun and a unique way to learn a word. Sometimes I’d give a hint with an emoji of what it might be.”

Hints are just one strategy, other people use different tactics to guess the word, including starting with specific words. Some players have a set starting word they use every day while others like to mix it up. Matej uses “stare” as her starting word and made a fun way for student’s to share the words they start with each day.

“We actually made a list on the board of my classroom. I asked every class period, ‘what’s your starting word?’ We came up with probably like 45 words by the end of the day,” Matej said.

Ashley Fearday, sophomore, plays Wordle everyday and uses “adieu” as her starting word. Austin Fearday, sophomore, used to play Wordle but doesn’t anymore. When he did, he started with crane because a study claimed it was the best starting word, he said.

Wordle got popular very quickly, going from 90 daily players in November to more than 300 times that amount by January, according to The New York Times, who bought the game in January.

“I think it [became popular] mostly because it was a competition. And everyone got the same word. So you could be like, ‘Yo, I got it in two tries and someone else didn’t,’” Austin said.

Instead of being about the competition, Matej thought the challenge level of the game contributed to its popularity.

“It was just challenging enough, it wasn’t too hard where people would give up. All these spin-offs of Wordle that have exploded now, I think some of them are super challenging and they’re not as popular because they’re too hard,” Matej said. “[Wordle] was just challenging enough where it was fun, and it gives you enough chances to try to get it. I think it was just a little bit challenging but totally approachable and anyone can do it. You can do it anywhere.”

There are Wordle spin-offs for every type of person including the Worldle, where you guess the country, the Dordle, where you guess two at once, and the Taylordle, which is always a word related to Taylor Swift. There’s also an actual Spanish Wordle, Un Juego de Palabras Diario, and even a Duotrigordle, with 32 words to guess at once. There are Wordles of pretty much any length with a variety of topics and difficulties to try.

“I used to [find Wordle difficult] but now that I know the tactics, not as much,” Ashley said. One tactic she uses is “different starting words with more vowels so you can figure out how many vowels [are in the word].”

Matej has some other tactics she uses to figure out the word, but she cautions that sometimes people might just be “thinking too hard” and the word might be easier than you anticipate.

“Sometimes you have to ignore the letters you already have and you kind of have to throw in a wildcard with a CH or a bunch of consonants you haven’t used yet, just to rule stuff out. I’m totally fine doing a throw away like I’ll do chimp or something random, just to make sure I can hit everything and see if it can lead me anywhere,” Matej said. “That’s been pretty successful sometimes because then you get like four more letters. Sometimes I’ll really sit with it for a very long time.”