Excel Template Guess the Word Game Cards

Since you’re reading this blog, you probably love spreadsheets. And do you love word games too? If you do, keep reading for a couple of ways to have fun with words in Excel!

Wordle Fun and Failure

Do you play the online Wordle game every day? I usually play that game first thing in the morning, to get my brain working.

I’ve only shared one of my Wordle scores online, and that was my embarrassing failure, on December 22, 2022.

What do you think the correct word was? The answer is below the screen shot.

That’s right – the correct answer was “Excel” and it took me 4 guesses to get it!

And earlier this week, the May 1st word was “Range”. It took me 4 guesses to get that one too. (Sigh)

I hope you have better luck with Excel-related words!

Guess the Word Game Offline

My granddaughter (Miss A) came to visit last weekend, and she loves Wordle too. After we finished the day’s game online, we decided to make our own “offline” version of a “Guess the Word” game.

To get started, Miss A drew a 5 x 6 grid on paper, and I secretly wrote a 5-letter word on another scrap of paper.

Miss A wrote her first guess in the grid, and asked me to check it, with these instructions:

Circle any letters that are in the answer word, but in the wrong spot
Draw a square around any letters that are in the answer word, and in the right position

It only took her 4 guesses, and then she challenged me to guess her secret word.

Printable Guess the Word Game Cards

We really enjoyed the game, so after Miss A headed home, I decided to make word game cards in Excel. That will make it easier to play “Guess the Word”, the next time she comes to visit!

While we played the game, Miss A wrote out the alphabet letters each time, to keep track of which ones she had used. That was a smart idea, so I added the 26 letters below the 5 x 6 grid.

At the top of the cards, I put the symbols that we used, using the WingDings font for the circle and square.

Play Guess the Word

When the game card was finished, I copied it, and pasted 3 more copies on the Excel sheet, so you can print them, 4 to a letter-sized page.

You can download the Excel Guess the Word Game Card template from my Contextures site, and have offline fun with your family and friends.

There are instructions on that page too, for how to play the game.

Or, you can make your own rules!

More Fun with Words in Excel

For another fun way to combine words and spreadsheets, you can create a word cloud in Excel.

In the screen shot below, you can see the word cloud that I created, based on the lyrics from a Bruce Springsteen song. The word size is based on the number of times that word is repeated in the song.

Can you guess which song I used? The answer is below the screen shot.

[Update May 4, 2023] The first word cloud has word counts for all the lyrics from the Born to Run ALBUM, not the song! See the second word cloud below, for the SONG word counts. Thanks to Dick Kusleika, for pointing out the problem, in the comments below!

Word counts in Born to Run ALBUM

2. Word counts for Born to Run SONG

Excel Word Cloud Workbook

I made that word cloud last January, using a file that I downloaded from Robert Mundigl’s Clearly and Simply blog.

There are instructions in the workbook, on how to change the settings, including the font size and colour.

I wrote about Robert’s word cloud tool, and the settings that I used, to get a large black font.

The default settings, shown in the word cloud below, were too small for my tired eyes!

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