To call Wordle an internet trend would be an understatement. The game has taken the internet by storm, with many people’s feeds filled with green and yellow squares. Google even added a Wordle easter egg on their website. And now, Malaysian programmer Eugene Low has also made Wordle variant called Katapat, which uses a Bahasa Melayu word list instead of an English one.
The mechanics of Katapat are the same as the original. If you want more information about how to play the game, you can check out our first article about Wordle, but the gist of it is pretty simple. Your guess must be a five-letter word and the colour of the tiles will change corresponding to the correctness of the letter. If it was the right letter in the right spot, it would be green. If it’s the wrong letter, it would turn grey, and if it’s the right letter in the wrong spot, it would be yellow. There are many strategies out there, but the main one is to try and use as many common letters as possible early on so that you can get the correct word with fewer guesses.
Just as Wordle is a portmanteau of “word” and Josh Wardle, the programmer who created the game, Katapat is a clever portmanteau of “kata” (word) and “tepat” (accurate). It also has a bonus wordplay function of sounding like “ketupat”, which is what the board might look like if you get it in five guesses. Another fun fact: “katapát” is a word in Tagalog that can be translated to “opposite”.
The game uses an online dictionary to source its word list and refreshes the word every day at midnight.
Many other variants have popped up as well, and some of them are quite fun. Lewdle is a variant that is indistinguishable from Wordle except for the fact that the word list only contains lewd words. There’s also Absurdle which actively tries to make you not get the word by changing the correct answer behind the scenes.
A few days ago, the Katapat website went so viral that it went down temporarily. Fortunately, the team behind the website managed to get it back up and running once again.
You can click here to play Katapat. Feel free to share your scores in the comments section!
