A lot of free daily word games have a word of the day. It is usually one special word that player will learn today. And usually it is kind of a rare word, not the one that you would use in your daily conversations. "Table" would never be a word of the day for example. The word "fusty" has much higher chances to be a Word of the day because it is not so commonly used and some people might not know it. In case you don't know, this word means something covered with dust and also having some dusty smell.
Anyway, this is the whole idea of the word of the day. You see this word, you play with it, and maybe you remember it better because you used it in the game. It is a nice idea which gives every day a small learning moment.
Smartle does not really have a word of the day.
But we think we have something a bit different and maybe even something better - word definitions.
As you probably already know, Smartle daily word puzzle does not have only one correct solution. It has more than one. Actually, it has a lot of correct solutions. In some daily puzzles, there can be dozens of different correct solutions. Sometimes even close to 100 different solutions. This is one of the things that makes Smartle a bit special. You are not trying to guess the exact same answer as everyone else. You are trying to solve the board in your own way.
This is also the reason why a classic word of the day does not really work for Smartle.
In most of the free daily word puzzles all players are moving toward the same answer. So it makes sense to say: "This is today's word." Because everyone will see it and everyone will use it and hopefully a lot of those people will learn this word.
But in Smartle it is different. Two players can open the same daily word puzzle in their browser and solve it in completely different ways. Both solutions will be correct but the words used in them would be completely different.
That is why instead of one word of the day, we have word definitions. Every word that you create in Smartle puzzle will appear in the word definitions. It can be a word that you planned to create or it can also be a word you created completely by accident.
And this happens quite often. Sometimes players are trying to build a word in one row, but because of the letters they swap, another row becomes a valid word too. Sometimes players move letters randomly just in hope a valid word will form. And they often succeed because there are many more words in English than we use in our day-to-day conversations. So sometimes you look at the board with a word highlighted in green and think: "Wait, is this actually a word?".
This is exactly the example when word definitions are very useful. We received a lot of good feedback about this feature. Many players told us that they like seeing the meaning of words they accidentally discovered. Or sometimes they know the word exists, they create the word because they have it in their memory, but they don't know what the word actually means. It takes some effort to Google the unknown word. But it is very easy to check it one click away in the definitions.
So from one side, Smartle does not have one focus word. But on the other side, Smartle can give you more than that.
Instead of learning one word chosen by us, you can learn the words that you personally discovered while solving. Your "word (or words) of the day" will be different from another player's word of the day.
Maybe one day we will still add a real word of the day as a separate feature. It could show one interesting word that you can create in the daily word puzzle. Maybe it could be the rarest word or just one word we choose manually. We are not sure yet. We first floated this idea with players back in 2025, and we are still listening to your feedback.
For now, we feel that word definitions are closer to the spirit of Smartle.
Let us know in Discord - would you like Smartle to have a word of the day or is the current word definitions feature enough for you?