Live · Real-Time Multiplayer

Wordle Duel

A real-time, two-player twist on the classic Wordle game. Instead of everyone solving the same daily word, each player secretly chooses the word their opponent has to guess, turning a solo puzzle into a head-to-head duel where both players race simultaneously to solve their assigned word.

March 2026 – May 2026 Node.jsSocket.ioDockerTrueNAS
<100ms
MESSAGE LATENCY
10–20
CONCURRENT PLAYERS
6
GUESSES PER ROUND
01

live_preview

Both players guess simultaneously. Green, yellow, and gray feedback flips in live as each guess lands.

You · word: CRANE
C
R
A
N
E
🏆 Solved in 1 guess, you win!
Opponent · word: SOLAR
S
T
O
R
E
Still guessing…
02

how_it_works

1

Create a room

Player A creates a private room and gets a shareable room code.

2

Join

Player B joins using that code.

3

Pick a word for the other player

Each player secretly selects a word for their opponent to solve.

4

Round starts

Once both words are locked in, the round begins simultaneously for both players.

5

Guess

Each player gets up to six guesses (classic Wordle rules) to solve their assigned word.

6

Win

Whoever guesses their word correctly first wins the round.

03

features

Real-Time 1v1 Multiplayer

Bidirectional gameplay over Socket.io: room membership, word selection, guess history, and round state synchronized live between both clients.

Private Rooms

Shareable, custom room codes let two players match up directly without a public lobby.

Classic Wordle Logic

Six guesses, color-coded green/yellow/gray feedback, and correct handling of repeated letters based on letter frequency in the target word.

Live Opponent Tracking

Watch your opponent's progress in real time as they work through their guesses.

In-Game Chat & Rematch

Built-in chat for banter between rounds, plus a rematch flow that skips recreating a room.

Real Dictionary Validation

Guesses and word selections are validated against a real English word list (dwyl/english-words) to block invalid entries.

04

architecture

05

highlights

✔ Real-time, bidirectional client-server sync via Socket.io sustaining sub-100ms message latency ✔ Supports 10–20 concurrent players across simultaneous game rooms since deployment ✔ Correctly reimplemented Wordle's letter-feedback algorithm, including repeated-letter edge cases ✔ Full-stack ownership: frontend UX (feedback, live progress, chat) + backend (rooms, matchmaking, validation) ✔ Taken from "runs on my machine" to a hosted, health-checked, self-hosted product on a custom domain
06

stack

Node.jsExpressSocket.ioHTML/CSS/Vanilla JSDockerDocker Compose