In her first column of term, Rebecca Gatti introduces a new linguistics project she has helped to work on - a database of Italian words taken from WhatsApp, giving an insight into the way that language is used online

The free online word-guessing game Wordle has taken over the internet, a craze which started in by New Zealand players. This app that started as a romantic gift to support a partner has now become one of our most competitive daily activities. In this discussion, Linguistics Editor Stephanie Jat looks at the linguistic elements of word guessing, and explores the benefits of corpus linguistics in helping find an advantageous first guess. (All images of the game are screenshots from players of the web page.)