Minecraft Meets Wordle In This Fan Creation
As the popularity of "Wordle" persists, even after the New York Times purchased the web game, fans continue to find new and interesting ways to interact with it. One enterprising individual even managed to make a player version of the title in "Minecraft" without using mods. This means anyone can have a new word puzzle to solve each day within the sandbox game by following a few simple steps. User urgle_gurgle shared a brief video on Reddit highlighting the experience — along with a link to the map download – which they have named "Word Hunt."
While some fans have caused an uproar over the slew of "Wordle" clones that keep popping up, this one stands out. Beyond the creator not attempting to make any money off of the project, it offers a unique way to play "Wordle," which is currently only available via a web browser. Just how does "Wordle" work in "Minecraft" without mods? Redditor urgle_gurgle explained that since "Minecraft" does not have a dictionary or an easy way to store a list of words to check against, they had to come up with another solution. They instead created a system that converts every word into its own unique number, which is then checked against a scoreboard containing all of the information. Getting the game to have the same daily words for everyone presented an additional challenge.
How Wordle works in Minecraft
To ensure everyone has the same word each day (so players can attempt to game the system using the scientifically best starting word), "Word Hunt" needs to ping what time it is for the player in UTC. While the concept may seem simple, urgle_gurgle pointed out that this is easier said than done. "You can get the time only from one specific feature in player heads," they stated. "When you give yourself a player head, it gets info from the Mojang servers ... most importantly, the time at which the player head was given."
Through techniques like string parsing, urgle_gurgle determined how to get a Unix timestamp, which displays the number of seconds that have passed since January 1, 1970. With additional math, they were able to ascertain what time it is for each player and update the daily word appropriately. The only downside to this system is that the time is only checked when booting up the game, so players will need to restart to get the new word. Luckily, as urgle_gurgle remarked, most people don't play "Wordle" or "Minecraft" for 24 hours at a time, so it shouldn't cause much of an issue.