Fernando Serboncini built Termo, a Portuguese Wordle, gaining ~200k users in three weeks

In late December 2021, Google engineering manager Fernando Serboncini noticed a surge of Twitter posts showing gray, yellow, and green box emojis signaling the viral word game Wordle. Although he enjoyed the game, playing it in English - his second language - left him wanting a version in his native Portuguese. He decided to adapt Wordle to Portuguese, creating Termo, and tackled challenges such as verb conjugations and diacritics without altering the core six-guess mechanic.

Within an hour of sharing the link with friends, Termo attracted 10,000 users; three weeks later it drew almost 200,000 daily players. The game's spread was amplified by friends sharing it further, and it gained coverage in local media. Serboncini plans to release his own Portuguese lexicon to help other developers build word games in the language.

Termo reached nearly 200,000 daily players within three weeks of launch

Serboncini found English Wordle fun but not optimal for him because English is his second language, motivating him to seek a Portuguese version.

He identified a lack of high-quality open-source Portuguese word lists, which made developing a faithful Wordle adaptation difficult but ultimately solvable.

The simple, shareable format of Wordle's emoji results made it easy for friends to spread the game, creating a rapid viral loop once Termo was launched.

Adapting a simple word game to another language requires solving local linguistic quirks while keeping the core gameplay intact, and can capture a large audience if the original's appeal translates

After its launch, Termo remained a popular Portuguese-language word game, regularly featured in Brazilian tech news and social media. The success encouraged other developers to create language-specific Wordle variants, contributing to a global wave of localized versions. Serboncini has said he intends to publish his own Portuguese lexicon publicly, aiming to lower the barrier for future word-game creators in Portuguese.