I Built a Wordle Solver Because I Hate Losing
Critics often tell me, “Mark, why do you only build useless apps? Why don’t you cure cancer or fix the economy?”
To those critics, I say: You have clearly never lost a Wordle streak on the 6th guess because you couldn’t decide between ‘SHAVE’ and ‘SHARE’.
That kind of pain changes a man.
So, in my quest to continue shipping “useless” software that actually solves my immediate, petty problems, I present to you: The Word Solver.
The Problem
We have all been there. You have S _ A R _. The letters E and T are dead to you (gray). You are sweating. Is it STARK? SHARD? SNARL?
You could use your brain, which is noble but exhausting. Or, you could use a machine that filters 10,000 words in 4 milliseconds.
The Solution
I built a lightweight web app that acts as a “Dictionary Sieve.” It’s not AI. It’s not ChatGPT hallucinating a word that doesn’t exist. It is pure, unadulterated logic powered by Next.js, Tailwind CSS, and the dark arts of Regular Expressions.
The interface: Simple, dark mode, and saves you from embarrassment.
👉 Live Demo: solver.sanchez.ph
👉 Source Code: github.com/tildemark/word-solver
How It Works (The “Science”)
The app essentially takes the dictionary and puts it through a three-stage TSA security checkpoint:
- The Pattern (Green): You tell it what you know. e.g.,
S..RE. - The Must-Haves (Yellow): You tell it what letters are floating around somewhere.
- The Ban List (Gray): The letters that have betrayed you.
Under the hood, it’s running a client-side filter against the Google 10k English dictionary (the “No Swears” version, because my mom reads this blog).
The “Tech Stack”
(I use the term loosely)
- Next.js (App Router): Because using React for a simple string filter is overkill, and I love overkill.
- Tailwind CSS: Because writing actual CSS in 2026 is illegal.
- Regex: The engine that powers the search. If you have two problems and you use Regex, you now have 300 problems. But in this case, it works.
Is This Cheating?
I prefer the term “Augmented Intelligence.”
If you use a calculator to do your taxes, are you cheating at math? No. You are being efficient. If you use my app to solve Wordle in 2 guesses, you are simply… optimizing your linguistic throughput.
(Okay, yeah, it’s definitely cheating. But I won’t tell if you don’t.)
Future Roadmap
I plan to add absolutely nothing else to this app because it does exactly one thing and does it well. However, if you want to fork it and add a “Scrabble Mode” or an “I’m feeling lucky” button that just prints “HELLO,” feel free.
Check out the repo, give it a star, and stop losing your streaks.