Word Guesser 2.6

What's new since 2.5

• The first launch now just speaks your language — it no longer asks. 2.5 opened with a second card
  offering you a word list. That card is gone from the normal path: the app downloads your device's own
  language straight away, switches to it, and tells you so in a short message above the keyboard. A
  wrong guess on our side costs you one tap on the header button, which changes the language at any
  moment, where asking cost a whole screen before you had seen the game.
• The picker stays as a fallback for languages we don't host. If your device is set to a language
  that has no word list here — Turkish, Japanese — there is nothing to adopt, so you still get the sheet
  and pick from the 17 we do have. Leaving those players on 510 built-in English words silently is the
  exact problem this replaced.
• Nothing changes if you already have a word list. Anyone updating from 2.5 or earlier keeps the
  language they were playing in; the adoption only ever runs on an install that has never downloaded
  one. And it never swaps the list out mid-guess — if a board is in progress, the new language waits
  for the next game.
• A first launch with no network retries on the next one instead of stranding that install on the
  built-in list for good.

Build

APK size	104,606 bytes (~102 KB)
versionCode	8
minSdk / targetSdk	21 / 34 (Android 5.0+)
APK SHA-256	73679ad7dce400a019a07a481b66b839f0b9fdb57367c526bc08b3d2abf63219
Signing cert SHA-256	F6:78:79:64:F8:E6:19:E5:91:85:36:00:34:DF:1A:D1:6D:E8:8E:13:F9:4A:61:53:9E:34:87:61:CF:0E:7D:63

The signing certificate is unchanged since 1.0, so this installs straight over any earlier version and
keeps your statistics and coins. The release carries a single permission, INTERNET. The same bytes are
served from the self-hosted F-Droid repo at https://abons.github.io/wordguesser/.

Word Guesser 2.5

What's new since 2.4

• The first launch now offers a real word list. Word Guesser ships with a built-in English list of
  510 five-letter words so it works offline the moment you install it — but that is a fallback, not the
  intended way to play, and until now the app landed on it silently. The first start is now two cards:
  How to play, then Pick a word list, with your device's own language at the top. Tap one and it
  downloads; tap Not now and you keep playing on the built-in list. The offer appears once, and
  never at all if you already have a list downloaded — updating from 2.4 or earlier changes nothing.
• The Dutch launcher icon now reads "raad maar": the guess RAAD 🟨🟩🟩⬜ against the solved answer
  MAAR 🟩🟩🟩🟩 — the app's own verb, and a board the game can really deal, since both words are in the
  Dutch list. (The English icon is unchanged: DOOR against WORD.)

Build

APK size	104,141 bytes (~102 KB)
versionCode	7
minSdk / targetSdk	21 / 34 (Android 5.0+)
APK SHA-256	cb35bd91670ffbdd469d751f9373b40e9c469f94ef3e9554086505bbe7e1846a
Signing cert SHA-256	F6:78:79:64:F8:E6:19:E5:91:85:36:00:34:DF:1A:D1:6D:E8:8E:13:F9:4A:61:53:9E:34:87:61:CF:0E:7D:63

The signing certificate is unchanged since 1.0, so this installs straight over any earlier version and
keeps your statistics and coins. The same bytes are served from the self-hosted F-Droid repo at
https://abons.github.io/wordguesser/.

Word Guesser 2.4 — the leaderboard moves to Firebase

Word Guesser 2.4 — the leaderboard moves to Firebase.

Since 2.3:

• The daily and timed leaderboards now run on a Firebase Realtime Database instead of dreamlo.
  Still REST only — no client SDK, no new runtime dependency — and still scoped per language, per
  day and per word length.
• ⚠️ The old dreamlo scores are gone. They lived on that service and did not come along. This
  is the one thing you lose by updating; the boards start empty and fill up again from today.
• No write key ships any more. The previous version carried the dreamlo write key in the app,
  which meant anyone who extracted it could wipe or forge the board. Authorisation is now entirely
  server-side, in database rules, so there is no key left in the APK to leak. Writes are
  append-only: a submitted score can be added but not overwritten or deleted.
• Cleartext HTTP is now refused outright. dreamlo was the only host that needed it. Everything
  the app talks to is HTTPS, and on Android below API 28 — where cleartext is permitted by
  default — the network security config now denies it explicitly.

Nothing else changed: same gameplay, same 17 languages, same scenic backdrop, same duels.

APK: 103,016 bytes, versionCode 6, minSdk 21 / targetSdk 34, R8 + resource shrinking.
SHA-256: 6f2b40ed660ec25aa7e7af0bbc5af0cda773fe414add831de1ed4bd9f31f5a56
Signing cert SHA-256: f6787964f8e619e59185360034df1ad16de88e13f94a61539e348761cf0e7d63 —
the same key as 1.0, so this installs as an update.

These are the exact bytes on the download page and in the F-Droid repo; the asset here is that same
file, not a rebuild.

Also in the shared hrbons F-Droid repo: https://abons.github.io/wordguesser/fdroid/repo

Still: no ads, no tracking, no billing, no third-party runtime dependencies.

Word Guesser 2.3 — the scenic-backdrop release

Word Guesser 2.3 — the scenic-backdrop release.

Since 2.2:

• A scenic backdrop behind the board. Eight themes — mountains, ocean, forest, desert, city,
  night, meadow, autumn — drawn entirely with Canvas primitives. No image assets and no new
  dependency, so the APK got smaller rather than bigger.
• One scene per game. Free play, timed and vs-computer roll a random one. Today's daily looks
  the same for everyone, in every language and at every word length, because its seed comes from
  the UTC day alone. An online duel derives the scene from the room code and the round number,
  which both phones already know, so nothing extra crosses the wire.
• High contrast turns the backdrop off and restores the flat dark background. That setting
  exists to maximise tile and letter contrast, and a picture behind the board fights it. Unscored
  tiles are a little more opaque now as well, so white letters keep something to sit on over the
  brightest sky.
• Smaller than 2.2 all the same: 103,054 bytes against 107,251, because the debug-only
  screenshot harness no longer survives into the release build.

What it costs to draw: measured against itself on a Motorola edge 30 neo, whose screen runs at
90 Hz (an 11.1 ms frame budget), over 50 frames of an identical tap sequence per side: with the
scene 9 ms median / 13 ms at the 90th percentile / 1 janky frame, without it 7 / 9 / 0. One skipped
frame in fifty. Turn on high contrast if you would rather have the flat board back.

APK: 103,054 bytes, versionCode 5, minSdk 21 / targetSdk 34, R8 + resource shrinking.
SHA-256: c967f95fac81ef0575bc647849ae4e64b89b2fab8838756152652306cc9ce1f0
Signing cert SHA-256: f6787964f8e619e59185360034df1ad16de88e13f94a61539e348761cf0e7d63 —
the same key as 1.0, so this installs as an update.

These are the exact bytes that have been live on the download page and in the F-Droid repo since
2026-07-28; nothing was rebuilt for this release, it only adds a second place to get them.

Also in the shared hrbons F-Droid repo: https://abons.github.io/wordguesser/fdroid/repo

Still: no ads, no tracking, no billing, no third-party runtime dependencies.