Motchus

Motchus is a daily French word game whose dictionary reaches past standard French into Marseillais and Provencal. Everything about it is French: the word to find, the keyboard, the definitions. The site bills itself as Le jeu en VO marseillaise and describes the daily answer as a word of Marseillais and Provencal speech, or one particularly used in Marseille. Six attempts at one word a day, changing at midnight Marseille time and identical for every player. The standard lexicon comes from Grammalecte, and the regional words come from Médéric Gasquet-Cyrus, a linguist who writes about the speech of Marseille; Denis Beaubiat writes and hosts the code. Motchus is openly inspired by Sutom, so the red, yellow and blue grid reads the same, but the word list and the definition printed once the word falls are its own.

1. Open the word of the day. It changes at midnight and is the same for everyone.
2. Type a guess on the AZERTY keyboard shown on screen or on your own; the first letter is already in place once the word runs to six letters or more.
3. Validate with the return key. A word the Motchus dictionary does not hold is refused with a message and costs nothing.
4. Read the colours to place the letters you have found.
5. Press the lightbulb key on the days it appears, when the authors have attached an extra clue.
6. Find the word within six attempts, then read its definition and copy the emoji grid to share it.

Motchus is for readers of French with an ear for Marseille, and for anyone happy to collect one regional word a day: the definition printed after the last guess is as much the reward as the win. A session lasts a few minutes, six attempts at most. Skip it if you do not read French, because nothing here is translated, and skip it if you want streaks, statistics or a browsable archive, because the game keeps none of those. What it offers instead is today's word, yesterday's word with its definition, and one board from fifty-one days back.

Each validated guess is revealed one letter at a time. A red box marks a letter in the word and in the right place, a yellow box a letter in the word but somewhere else, a blue box a letter that is not in the word at all, and the on-screen keyboard takes the same colours. A word the Motchus dictionary does not hold is refused with a message and costs no attempt; a word that is too short is refused the same way. Win and the game answers Aïoli with the number of guesses used; miss on the sixth and it prints the word. Either way the definition follows.

Mot du jour

One word a day, changing at midnight, identical for every player.

Motchus 51

A second board, linked from the Liens panel once the daily word is settled, that replays the Motchus from fifty-one days earlier under the same six-attempt rules.

• Do not restrict yourself to standard French. The page says plainly that words from Marseillais and Provencal are accepted, and on some days that is where the answer lives.
• If you already play Sutom, the grid will feel identical and the dictionary will not. Coming in with the same reflexes and a wider word list is the whole adjustment.
• From six letters up the opening letter is given, so spend the first guess on the other positions rather than on an initial already sitting on the board.
• Watch the banner above the grid before the first guess: it warns when the answer is hyphenated, an expression in several words, or a word carrying an apostrophe, and the keyboard grows the matching key.
• Read Le motchus d'hier under the grid, the previous day's word with its definition; the same vocabulary comes back.