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# Oh My God, Am I A Genius At Irish Language Wordle
- URL: https://aftermath.site/irish-wordle-foclach/
- Published: 2026-01-13T19:01:41.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-13T19:01:41.000Z
- Description: No, but please let me have this
- Author: Riley MacLeod
- Tags: Video Games, foclach, irish, irish language, wordle, Blog

*Wordle* fever has largely come and gone, as has the frantic explosion of spinoff games. But the game itself lives on under the [ownership of The New York Times](https://aftermath.site/new-york-times-wordle-connections-puzzmo-games/), and many of the games inspired by it are still thriving. So I wasn't exactly surprised to come across an Irish language version this morning, but I *was* surprised to see that it was still updating with daily puzzles. And I was even more surprised to win today's game, a clear sign that I am an Irish language genius.

[*Foclach*](https://www.foclach.com/?ref=aftermath.site) is *Wordle*, but in Irish. ("[Foclach](https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fgb/foclach?ref=aftermath.site)" means "wordy" or "verbose," and is a word I didn't know before; thanks, game!) It was created in 2022 by Linda Keating, who told the [Irish Independent](https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/its-filling-people-with-joy-irish-woman-creates-foclach-the-irish-version-of-wordle/41309366.html?ref=aftermath.site) that "part of the pure joy \[of it\] is pulling together this community of Irish language speakers" around the game, which had over 10,000 players in 2022\. A fan of word games, Keating built the game using a *Wordle* clone and drew from several lists of five-letter Irish words. Unlike *Wordle*, *Foclach* has a practice mode, and Keating told the Irish Independent that adding the mode was when the game "really took off." She said she has no plans to monetize it--"I’ll never put it behind a paywall or I’ll never put ads on the website"--and that its simplicity is part of its charm, saying "it’s the kind of thing you would have seen on the web going back to the 1990s."

I've been [learning Irish](https://aftermath.site/irish-now-youre-talking/) since the spring from a combination of books, in-person and online classes, and the [horrors](https://aftermath.site/duolingo-ai/) of Duolingo. It's been tough--it's a complicated language, and there also aren't as many opportunities to encounter it in daily life as there are with other languages that are more widespread. (On Friday I went to a play at New York's [Irish Arts Center](https://irishartscenter.org/?ref=aftermath.site), and I was so smitten with the fact that the building has signage in Irish *and* that I could read that signage that I trespassed up several floors before I realized it.) All of this is to say that *Foclach* presented me with a unique challenge: unlike *Wordle*, I just don't know that many Irish words to guess.

So I was shocked when I got Tuesday's daily puzzle on my fifth of six tries, relying solely on my own knowledge of Irish. **(Spoilers ahead if you're going to play it yourself.)** I feel like it's key to start off with a good first guess in games like this, so I decided to go with "rudaí" ("things") because it contains a variety of vowels, including a fada, or accent mark. (Fada add another complication to *Foclach*; there are some words that are spelled the same but mean [different things](https://www.bitesize.irish/blog/our-fada/?ref=aftermath.site) depending on the fada.) I definitely wasn't as economical with my guesses as I am in English, using letters I knew weren't in the answer because they were in words I knew. But I managed to get close enough to make an educated guess at the last letter, and was pumped when I got it right.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-13-at-9.45.22---AM.png)

Scrín means "shrine." Another new word!

Things didn't go as well when I picked a practice puzzle at random. "Rudaí" only got me an "a," and from there I floundered for appropriate words. My vocabulary was lacking, but there were a few guideposts to help me: vowels in Irish are divided into "broad" (a, o, u) and "slender" (e, i) and have to stick together in certain ways, which helped me pin down the order of a bunch of vowels. But then I was stuck with one missing letter. I went to the dictionary, but without the first letter, it was hard to search. I even looked up some of the word lists *Foclach* is based on, but they didn't help much either. Eventually, much like in *Wordle*, I just went through each remaining letter to see if they'd form a word--but unlike in *Wordle*, I didn't really *know* if my results were actually words at all. I managed to get the practice puzzle's answer of "mnaoi" (an unusual form of "bean," or "woman") by being familiar with the cluster of "mna" as a plausible run of letters ("mná" is "women," the plural of "bean.").

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-13-at-10.56.25---AM.png)

My guess of "gnaoi" is also a word, meaning "beauty" or "comeliness," but I didn't know that when I guessed it; I only guessed it because I knew "g" could come before "n" based on a phrase I already know, "de gnáth" for something like "typically"

What's really fun for me about *Foclach* is how it asks me to use my language skills in a totally different way than *Wordle*. In the English game, I'm guessing *words*, drawing on my vocabulary knowledge in a way that makes the game's primary pleasure being proficient with English. I felt *smart* when I used to get the *Wordle* in a few tries (I [don't play it](https://writersagainstthewarongaza.com/boycott-nyt?ref=aftermath.site) anymore). But with *Foclach*, my key strategy can't really be vocabulary, because my Irish vocabulary is so small. So I have to pull on the related skills I employed above, like spelling rules and other words I know. It feels like a totally different way to think about both word games and Irish, and instead of feeling clever when I got the answers, I felt like I'd climbed a mountain. It's a really cool way to engage with a language I'm learning, and I love how it forces me to explore the dictionary and learn new words.

Thanks to the practice mode, I have years of *Foclach* to go through, and I'm so excited to play more of it. It's definitely going into my daily rotation alongside my other Irish game, [dictionary website Teanglann's spelling game](https://www.teanglann.ie/en/spelling-game/?ref=aftermath.site), which I'll say I'm pretty good at as long as I limit the dialects it draws from. Obviously I won't be able to maintain my 100% win rate forever, but I'll relish in it while I can.