Words Néon
Guess the hidden French word in 6 tries. Three lengths (5, 6 or 7 letters). A retro-neon word game for French speakers and learners.
Read the rules below, then start your run.
About this game
Words Néon is a FRENCH word game in a polished retro-neon skin, directly inspired by the greats of the genre — Wordle, Motus and Sutom. Worth saying up front: the interface is in English, but the words themselves are French, drawn from a curated dictionary, which makes it a fine vocabulary workout if you are learning the language. The idea is crisp and horribly addictive: a mystery word is drawn at random and you get six tries to find it. Every word you submit comes back with colour clues, tile by tile. Green means the letter is in the right place; yellow means it is in the word but somewhere else; grey means it is not there at all. Cross-reference those clues, try after try, and the net closes around the hidden word. Repeated letters are handled strictly, exactly as in a proper Wordle: play a letter twice when the solution holds it once and only one of your tiles lights up. As in Sutom, words are handled without accents and in capitals, which keeps typing simple — no accented keys needed, and the on-screen AZERTY keyboard carries only the 26 letters plus a submit and a delete key. Those keys take on colours as you play, so you can see at a glance which letters you have already ruled out. Three difficulty levels sit behind a clear selector: Easy with five-letter words, Medium with six letters and Hard with seven-letter words, which are rarer. The longer the word, the higher the points scale, and the upper levels unlock trophies of their own. At the end of every game, whatever the level, the answer is revealed along with its definition. To stay playable with colour blindness, every revealed tile also carries a shape — a disc for the right place, a ring for present, a cross for absent — so the information never rests on colour alone. The score rewards speed and efficiency: the fewer tries you use and the faster you are, the more you bank. A word found first time is worth the maximum; every extra try and every passing second nibbles at your total. Words Néon is free and instant in your browser, nothing to install, on a physical keyboard at your desk (letters, Enter to submit, Backspace to fix) or with a thumb on mobile thanks to its touch keyboard. Every reveal flips smoothly at 60 frames per second with a discreet synthesised cue. New game, new word: the replay value is endless. Create an account to sync your high scores, enter the leaderboards and unlock trophies as you play. How many mystery words can you crack, and in how few tries?
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How to play
Guess the hidden French word in six tries, using the colour clues that tell you which letters are in the right place.
Game rules
- A mystery word is hidden — a French word — and you get six attempts to find it.
- Type a valid word of the right length and submit it to get your clues.
- After each try every tile takes a colour: green means right letter in the right place, yellow means the letter is in the word but elsewhere, grey means it is not in the word at all.
- Repeated letters are handled strictly: a letter you play more often than it actually occurs stays grey.
- Words carry no accents and show in capitals; use the colours on the on-screen keyboard to rule letters out.
- Pick your length: Easy (5 letters), Medium (6) or Hard (7).
Controls (keyboard and touch)
- On-screen AZERTY keyboardEnter letters with a finger or the mouse
- Enter / SubmitSend the word you have typed
- DeleteRemove the last letter
- Physical keyboardType letters, Enter and Backspace directly
How a run ends
You win by finding the word before your six tries run out; your score rewards speed and a low number of attempts. Fill all six rows without success and the game is lost — it then shows you the word and its definition.
Tips & strategy
Open with a vowel-heavy word
Start with a word packed with vowels and common letters. You pull the most green and yellow clues out of your very first try, and that maps out the whole rest of the game.
Move your yellows
A yellow letter is in the word but not in that spot, so on your next try put it somewhere else rather than leaving it where it was. Ruling positions out is what makes the possibilities collapse.
Use the shapes, not just the colours
Every tile also carries a shape: a disc for right place, a ring for present, a cross for absent. If colours are hard for you to tell apart, those symbols carry exactly the same information without any ambiguity.
Did you know?
The green-and-yellow clue system comes from Wordle, made by Josh Wardle, a worldwide phenomenon in late 2021 and bought by the New York Times in 2022. The idea is far older, though: the French TV game show Motus had been broadcasting it since 1990.
Motus itself drew on Jotto (1950s) and on the classic logic game Mastermind. The French-speaking community later built Sutom, a free adaptation handling the quirks of French. Words Néon sits in that line, with capitalised words stripped of accents and strict handling of double letters.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Words Néon free to play?
- Yes. Words Néon is completely free and runs straight in your browser — no download, no install, no paywall.
- How do you play Words Néon?
- Hit “Play” to start Words Néon. It runs on keyboard on desktop and on touch controls on phones and tablets — no controller needed.
- Do I need an account to play?
- No — you can play right away as a guest, and your best score is kept on this device. A free account (by email link, no password) syncs your high scores, puts you on the leaderboards and unlocks trophies.
- Does Words Néon work on mobile?
- Yes. The game is responsive and fully playable with your fingers on phones and tablets, just like on desktop, with no app to install.
- Are the words in French or in English?
- The words are French. The interface is in English, but the mystery word, the on-screen AZERTY keyboard and the definition revealed at the end all come from a curated French dictionary — which makes it a neat vocabulary workout if you are learning the language.
- How are letters that appear twice handled?
- The game only lights up as many copies of a letter as the word really contains. Play two E’s when the word has one and one of them stays grey — that is a valuable clue, not a bug.
- Do I need to type the accents?
- No: every word is handled without accents and in capitals. You type the bare letters, so a word like FORÊT is simply played as FORET. No need to work out where an accent goes.