How Stumpd Was Born: The Inspiration Behind the Game
April 12, 2026
Every project has an origin story. For Stumpd, it starts with two things: an obsession with the IPL and the game that made the whole world guess five-letter words at breakfast.
The Wordle effect
When Wordle went viral in early 2022, it changed how people thought about casual games. A single puzzle per day, no app to download, no account required, and a simple sharing format that turned social media timelines green and yellow. It proved that constraints — one puzzle, six guesses, everyone gets the same word — can make a game more addictive, not less.
We were hooked like everyone else. But we also noticed something: the concept was incredibly flexible. What if the word was not random? What if it was the name of someone you already cared about?
Cricket meets word puzzles
The Indian Premier League brings together the best cricket talent in the world. Every season, fans debate lineups, track performances, and memorise player names across ten franchise teams. That depth of knowledge — names, spellings, team associations — felt like a perfect fit for a guessing game.
The idea was simple: take the daily puzzle format and replace the generic dictionary word with an IPL player's name. Suddenly, the game was not just about language skills — it was about how well you know the players you watch every evening.
Building on FIFA Wordle
Before Stumpd, we built FIFA Wordle — the same concept applied to football players. That project taught us a lot about what works and what does not in sports-themed word games. We learned that players love the daily cadence, that streaks drive retention, and that head-to-head challenges add a social layer that keeps people coming back.
With those lessons in hand, we set out to build something specifically for cricket. The IPL audience is enormous and passionate, and we wanted to give them a game that felt like it was made just for them.
The “aha” moment
The real turning point came during the 2025 IPL season. We were watching a match and debating player names with friends — who played for which team last year, how to spell that overseas player's name, whether a certain player had been traded. It hit us: this was already a guessing game. We just needed to put it on a screen.
Within weeks, we had a working prototype. We shared it with a small group of cricket-loving friends. The reaction was instant: “I need this every morning.” That was all the validation we needed to turn a weekend experiment into a real product.
What drives us
Stumpd is not backed by a big studio. It is an indie project built by a small team at Kylog Games who genuinely love cricket and puzzles. We build the features we would want as players ourselves — hard mode for the competitive crowd, challenge mode for trash-talking with friends, and an archive so you never miss a puzzle.
If you want to know how the game evolved after that first prototype, read about the full journey of Stumpd. Or if you are new, start with what Stumpd is and how to play.