Wurdella dictionary policy
What words are included in Wurdella?
Wurdella uses curated answer banks rather than every possible grammatical variation of every English word. The goal is to make each answer a useful standalone vocabulary word that fits its difficulty level.
Core word-bank rules
Kids answers are exactly four letters. Default, Advanced and Expert answers are exactly five letters.
Ordinary plural forms are excluded when a singular form exists. For example, the answer bank favors a singular base noun rather than adding a second entry simply by attaching -s or -es.
Verbs use the base dictionary form. Wurdella favors forms such as LICK, JUMP, PULL or BAKE, rather than ordinary past-tense, future-tense or -ing variations of the same verb.
Past-tense forms are excluded when they are simply an inflection of a base verb. The same principle applies to participles and routine grammatical variants that do not add a distinct vocabulary item.
Future-tense constructions are not answer words. Wurdella answer banks contain individual dictionary words, not phrases such as “will play” or other tense constructions.
Why we use base forms
A curated base-form list creates better variety. Without this rule, one simple word could occupy several answer slots as a singular, plural, past tense and participle. We would rather use those slots for genuinely different vocabulary. It also makes the learning value clearer because each result can be paired with its own definition and pronunciation.
A word ending in S is not automatically a plural
English has singular dictionary words that naturally end in s, so Wurdella does not use a crude rule that bans every word ending with that letter. The question is whether the playable entry is itself a legitimate standalone word or merely the ordinary plural form of another word.
The same care applies to words that happen to resemble a past-tense or participle ending. Selection is based on the actual grammatical and dictionary status of the word, not only its final letters.
What each difficulty is designed to contain
Kids: four-letter words chosen for younger players, early spelling practice, familiar concepts and approachable vocabulary.
Default: five-letter words that are broadly recognizable and suitable for everyday play.
Advanced: five-letter words with harder spelling patterns, less obvious vocabulary or meanings that require stronger language knowledge.
Expert: five-letter vocabulary that may be rare, technical, historical, scientific, regional or specialized. Expert is intentionally a place to encounter words you may never have seen before.
Definitions and pronunciation are part of the word bank
Every playable answer is expected to have a definition and a pronunciation guide. This is important because Wurdella is not only testing whether you can arrange letters correctly; it is also designed to help players understand unfamiliar vocabulary after a round.
Our build includes validation checks for word length and required word information so obvious data mistakes are caught before a new version is published.
What we exclude
In addition to routine plurals and inflected verb forms, Wurdella may exclude entries that are unsuitable for the intended difficulty, malformed, the wrong length, duplicates already represented elsewhere in the same bank, or too dependent on a grammatical variation of a more useful base word.
The Expert list can contain unusual legitimate dictionary vocabulary, but rarity alone is not enough. The word should still function as a real standalone vocabulary item with a meaningful definition and pronunciation.
Why this matters for learning
A cleaner word bank means more of your rounds introduce genuinely different vocabulary instead of recycling the same word through grammatical endings. Read our full guide to learning vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation with Wurdella.