Bootle is a clone of Wordle that lives in the boot sector. It was created by Oscar Toledo, a Mexican programmer who was inspired by DOS versions of the popular word game and ended up producing one that is much easier.

Bootle is a COM file that replicates the game in a boot sector, however it only comprises 57 words owing to space constraints (the entire game is just 512 bytes). If you want a comprehensive word list, they have released version 2 that includes a loader that retrieves the dictionary from disk and builds a 360KB image that can be used without an operating system.

Bootle is IBM 8088-compatible

The code, along with other instructions, is available on GitHub. Bootle can be launched as a COM file or loaded into a floppy boot sector if you want to use it. It’s backwards compatible with the first PC, an IBM with an Intel 8088 processor.

If you wish to put the program together, you’ll need to get Netwide Assembler. Oscar tested this in a Windows XP virtual PC using VirtualBox for macOS. It also works with DosBox and qemu emulators, he says.

The Wordle phenomenon is one that continues to bear fruit, and while some may feel that no one plays it anymore, the reality is quite different. Every month, hundreds of thousands of results are published on Twitter; in fact, you can acquire statistics on whether nations are better or worse by guessing the word of the day in Wordle.

The game has spawned a slew of clones in many languages, as well as alternatives to play in an Excel spreadsheet and additional games based on its format that require you to predict everything from geography to mathematics.

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