A while back, my partner (who is a native Italian speaker) started playing with a simple app where you have to find as many English words as possible from a daily nine-letter grid. She often stumbled upon new words by chance, just by selecting the right letters or trying something that sounded plausible. She started using these words in the game even though she didn't know what they meant.

This inspired me to create a similar game in my native language, Italian. My version, however, provides the definitions for the words you find - whether you knew them or discovered them by chance. The goal is not just to entertain but also to teach. For native Italian speakers, it's a way to learn new, less common words. For non-native speakers, it's a chance to learn more about terms they may have heard but never fully understood.

You can find the web app here: https://paroline.click/

Definitions and translations of words are drawn from lexicographic data from Wikidata: in the past few months I have made around 3000 edits, adding new words and improving existing ones, there is still a lot of work to do but all improvements to lexemes stay free and open.

This is still a work in progress, and I would be very grateful for some early feedback from anyone who is learning Italian to see if this method is actually helpful for building your vocabulary.

Thanks for your feedback!