Canadian Wordle lovers now have a game to call their own

Ottawa man creates 'Canuckle' Ottawa's Mark Rogers invents Canadian version of the wildly popular game Wordle. CTV's Dave Charbonneau reports.

Move over, Wordle. There’s a new version of the popular word game with a Canadian twist.

It is called Canuckle, and it was created by an Ottawa resident.

"Every word at the end is going to be related to Canada in some way and it’s got some sort of theme that can be tied back to Canada," creator Mark Rogers says.

Rogers just wanted to make something that his family could have fun with. However, since its release on Feb. 10, 2.4 million people have played it.

"My kids had been doing some of the Wordle puzzles and there were some tricky words like 'knoll' and 'proxy' and they didn’t know what those were," Rogers says. "So I thought it would be fun to have some words that were a little more common, but tied to Canada."

Wordle is the online game in which players have six guesses to find the correct five-letter word. Canuckle might be easier if you know what a "Hoser" is, like the "Leafs", or play from inside an "Igloo" - you get the idea.

Brenda Neale, Rogers aunt, plays Canuckle every morning.

"I love the game because it’s Canadian is the main thing," Neale says. "I just like the fact that you have to think of Canadian things. And he’s had some great words that are Canadian - sorry, loons, syrup, maple."

Rogers credits his brother for coming up with the name, but it wasn't easy at first.

"He proposed the name Moosele, I came back with Beaverdle. Wordle-Eh was another one," Rogers says. "And finally he suggested Canuckle and it just stuck."

Canuckle is getting more popular every day. Yesterday alone there were 80,000 users playing the Canadian word game. However, as popular as it is, the game's creator says it is not going to last forever.

"We actually decided we wanted to get all the way to Canada Day," Rogers says. "So the last word is going to be on July 1. So, we’ve got a good number of words in store all the way to July 1."

Apparently, Canadians take their word games very seriously.

"One of the words we ran in the past, so not a spoiler, was aboot," says Rogers. "And we got quite a few emails saying that this is not an official word, it’s not in the dictionary. But that’s what great about Canuckle, there’s some Canadianisms. It is a little bit different, it is not officially Worldle. But there’s some fun words for Canada and we’re trying to think a bit outside the box. So we’ve had some fun with it.”

So give yourself a chuckle, and try out Canuckle.