Hamword is a Winlink-based game that mimics the popular five-letter word guessing game Wordle. It was started to give hams a way to practice their Winlink skills while having fun thinking about an unknown five-letter word. Hamword has just completed its second year of operation, and its impressive stats are shown below. This game has gained an international audience, with hams from at least 22 countries playing along.

Play the Game

You can join the fun by sending a five-letter word to the Winlink tactical callsign HAMWORD. You do not have to send messages using your radio connection. Winlink messages can be transferred over the Internet using the Telnet interface. For more information about the game, Winlink, and the Hamword Leaderboard are available at https://hambooks.org/hamword/.

Recent Updates

If you have been playing Hamword recently, you will have noticed some updates to the game. Or, start playing to see these new features.

• Game timing has been adjusted to
• Statistics are available on the leaderboard pages at https://hambooks.org/hamword/menu.
• Charts of player activities have been added.
• Individual scores
• Streaks
• Incompletes

Emergency Communications Practice

If you are an ARES leader or run some Winlink drills, feel free to add playing a Hamword game to your skills tasks. Ask your members to send a Winlink message to HAMWORD and play the game. It’s also a great way to test your digital emergency communication equipment without additional assistance.

Second Year Statistics

For those of you keeping score, in the first year, we have:

• an average of 78 folks playing the game every week. https://hambooks.org/hamword/previousweeks/.
• About 380 hams have played the game. The past scores are on the leaderboard page at https://hambooks.org/hamword/leaderboard/.
• 41 of the 50 states have played Hamword https://hambooks.org/hamword/states/. We are missing responses from Alaska, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wyoming. Please play along if you or your friends are from one of these targeted states!
• 57 of the 71 ARRL sections that have played the game https://hambooks.org/hamword/sections/.
• 22 countries playing the game https://hambooks.org/hamword/countries/.
• 5,700 individual games have been played.
• over sent/received over 73,000 Winlink messages in the two years.

So, keep playing to improve or practice your Winlink skills. Spread the word, compete with your friends, and demonstrate how we can send and receive emails via radio using HAMWORD.

Graphic Performance Data

Graphs like the one shown here show how your games have been played. You can also check your friend’s progress and get averages for each section, state, or country.