Word-leh's Singaporean creator surprised by game's popularity

"Bojio", "kiasu" and "aiyah" - these are just some of the five-letter words that feature in Word-leh, the Singlish spin-off of viral online word game Wordle.

And it is becoming a sensation, drawing more than 50,000 visitors to date, about a third of whom went on to play the game.

Its creator, New York-based Singaporean Sha-Mayn Teh, says in an e-mail interview that she was surprised at its swift popularity.

"I made Word-leh to play with friends and, suddenly, there was pressure to have a solid word list. Once Word-leh got 1,000 visitors, I decided to buy a nicer domain."

Ms Teh, who has a background in software engineering and has led engineering teams at Google and start-ups, used an open-source clone of Wordle to create Word-leh.

She sent it to friends on Feb 1 and released it to the public on Tuesday, when it swiftly gained fans such as Singapore actor Hossan Leong.

On Wednesday, she relaunched on a new domain, word-leh.com.

Word-leh's gameplay is virtually identical to Wordle's.

Every day, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with green blocks indicating a correctly placed guess, while yellow blocks mark out a correct letter in the wrong position.

But where Wordle uses common English words for its solutions, Word-leh invites participants to guess a Singlish word, from "makan" (eat) to "bojio" (no invitation/missing out).

Word-leh's quick success echoes that of Wordle, which was made available to the public in October last year and, by last month, had amassed a player base of more than 10 million, according to United States media outlet Time Magazine.

Ms Teh, who declined to give her age, says the vast majority of Word-leh players are in Singapore, with the US in second place, followed by Malaysia. There have been players even in Germany.

A challenge she faced in generating the word bank for Word-leh was the spelling of many words that are spoken colloquially, but do not have a definitive textual form.

She says if the word originated in Malay, then the original spelling wins - so "macam" (to bear resemblance), not "machiam".

"But if it's Hokkien, the romanisation isn't standard, so there could be multiple variations that are widely used.

"Sometimes, I pick the one that looks more official and, if it's unclear, I 'tikam-tikam' (randomly pick) or include both."

She consulted books on Singlish such as the Coxford Singlish Dictionary (2002) by Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen and Spiaking Singlish (2017) by Dr Gwee Li Sui to populate the word list.

Dr Gwee, 51, says the game can definitely go on for a few more years.

"Singlish has a large, as-yet unfinished and growing registry of words. Nobody can comment on how large it really is.

"We are now entering the age of Singlish as text and not just speech. That brings a whole range of new, important questions."

For Ms Teh, who has lived in New York for more than 10 years, Singlish is integral to her Singaporean identity.

"For me, Singlish is about community and culture and it's a way of keeping a connection to Singapore wherever I go."