Wordle, But With a Twist: A Shortcut I Built That Gives You Hints
I’ve been having fun experimenting with Shortcuts, APIs, and local AI models, and recently I built something that is kinda fun: a Shortcut that gives you a hint for the daily Wordle without spoiling the answer.
How It Works
Here’s the flow I put together:
- Grab Today’s Wordle
The Shortcut starts by formatting the current date and plugging it into the New York Times’ Wordle API (https://www.nytimes.com/svc/wordle/v2/[date].json). That gives me the official solution for the day in JSON format.
- Parse the API Response
I use Shortcuts’ “Get Dictionary from” action to pull out the solution field – the actual word for today’s puzzle. Normally that would be game over, but that’s where the next step comes in.
- Ask AI for a Hint
Instead of showing the word, the Shortcut creates a prompt:
“Without telling me the word, provide a hint to what the given word is below.”
I pass that along with the solution to Gemma 2B v2, a small local model I’m running. The model generates a creative hint while keeping the answer hidden.
- Show the Hint
Finally, the Shortcut displays the hint in an alert, giving me just enough of a push without ruining the puzzle.
Why I Like It
What I enjoy about this Shortcut is how it combines three different things I love tinkering with:
- Web data: pulling JSON directly from the NYT Wordle API.
- Automation: using Shortcuts to parse and structure everything.
- Local AI: letting an on-device model do the fun part of writing the hint.
The result is quick, private, and surprisingly fun – every time I run it, I get a slightly different hint for the same word.
Final Thoughts
I wanted a way to make Wordle more approachable on the days when the word feels impossible, without crossing into outright cheating. This Shortcut hits that sweet spot for me. It’s a simple automation, but it feels fresh and playful every time I use it.
Wordle Hint
