It's Easy Once You Know How

Dipping once more into the archive of a Color Computer mailing list, I noticed a few messages referring to Wordle, and my interest picked up at once. Soon enough, I’d been pointed to the code repository for the program, and soon after that I had it running in emulation. It does help there that a “cross-platform” emulator long offering the “CoCo 1” alongside the Dragon (a Welsh computer that used the 6809 and Motorola graphics chipset, but wasn’t quite a “load your cassette and go” compatible so far as I understand) added the “CoCo 3” not that long ago. Before then, I’d had to either take on the overhead of Wine or pick my way through the unique interface of MAME.

That this version of the game runs in BASIC might suggest how simple it is to implement, even if it’s not quite as elegant as the original web version. Still, “getting something from recent days running as if in some alternative universe from years ago” always amuses me. A while ago, I found a program for the original TRS-80 that could create Sudoku puzzles; a while after that, I found a program for the Apple II that could solve them. So far as “getting something running on the Color Computer out of the many other old computers” goes, though, it didn’t surprise me too much when, after a bit of searching, I turned up references to quite a few other versions of Wordle for other antique machines.