Below is what the record actually shows about the creators, how the game was made, its first words and how it grew. We have kept to facts we could trace to an interview, a news story or the official game's own recap of past puzzles, and the sources are listed at the end.
Who are Mark and Jeff Rogers?
Not much about the brothers has been published. What is on the record:
- Mark Rogers lives in Ottawa. In a 2022 interview with WordFinder he said he had worked for the federal government for about 20 years, and that he studied electrical engineering.
- Jeff Rogers was described in the same interview as an engineer at IBM.
- A 2026 profile in FACES Magazine calls them "the founders of Canuckle and Canoku" and says the game is built and run out of Ottawa.
Mark is the brother quoted in the main 2022 interview, which is why some articles name only him, but both brothers are credited as the creators.
How Canuckle started
The timing explains a lot. Josh Wardle released Wordle to the public in October 2021, and it grew from 90 players on November 1 to more than 300,000 by January 2, 2022. The New York Times bought it on January 31, 2022. Ten days later, Canuckle published its first puzzle.
The brothers did not start from a blank page, and they have been open about it. In 2022 Wordle ran from a single JavaScript file. Mark told WordFinder they reverse-engineered that file, then changed the colours, the title and the word list, and added Canadian messages and the trivia that appears after each game. They published their code on GitHub and credited Wordle as the base of the game.
The most visible change was the colour. Correct letters turn red instead of green, which makes a finished grid look a lot like the flag.
Where the name came from
The name joins "Canuck", an informal word for a Canadian, with the "-le" ending borrowed from Wordle. The word Canuck has a long and argued-over history of its own, which we cover in what Canuckle means.
The first week of Canuckle words
The official recap of past puzzles lists every early answer. The first week set the tone:
| # | Date | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Feb 10, 2022 | CANOE |
| 2 | Feb 11, 2022 | MAPLE |
| 3 | Feb 12, 2022 | INUIT |
| 4 | Feb 13, 2022 | PLAID |
| 5 | Feb 14, 2022 | IGLOO |
| 6 | Feb 15, 2022 | HOSER |
| 7 | Feb 16, 2022 | SYRUP |
You can see every answer since, sorted by month, in our list of past Canuckle answers.
Building the word list
Finding five-letter words with a clear Canadian link was harder than the code. Mark said that early on they had only about 50 or 60 usable words. The fun facts were researched from sources such as Canadian encyclopedias, Wikipedia and Statistics Canada.
Players shaped the list as well. About four or five planned words were changed after launch. The best-known swap happened on March 28, 2022, the day version 4 of the game came out: ORDER, for the Order of Canada, replaced EAGLE. EAGLE did get its turn later, as puzzle #215 on December 15, 2022.
Two early words became famous for catching people out. BANFF (#13, February 22, 2022) surprised players who did not expect a place name. SCOFF (#40, March 21, 2022) was the hardest so far, Mark said, because few players thought of it as Canadian. The fun fact explained that it is Newfoundland slang for a big feed.
How fast it grew
Canuckle spread quickly as people shared their red and yellow grids. By April 20, 2022, Mark reported more than 2.9 million users and over 55 million page views, with players in 196 countries. The game's Facebook page opened on April 16, 2022.
By April 2026, FACES Magazine reported more than 240 million plays from over 12 million unique players, with tens of thousands coming back each day to keep a streak going. On February 7, 2025, the day of puzzle #1,000, the City of Ottawa proclaimed Canuckle's 1000th Puzzle Day.
A planned ending, then a comeback
The brothers never meant Canuckle to run forever. In spring 2022 they announced an end date: Canada Day, July 1, 2022. An archive with a random button stayed online for people who wanted to replay old puzzles. Ideas they mentioned for afterwards included a short 2023 edition of around 30 words and a version about famous Canadians.
What actually happened was different. Puzzle #142, PROUD, ran on July 1, 2022. Then, after a break of just over three months, the daily game came back on October 4, 2022 with puzzle #143, SPIKE, and it has kept going since. The full story of the pause and what changed after it is in what happened to Canuckle.
What the brothers have added since
- Canoku, a daily sudoku that uses Canadian emoji instead of numbers. The official version offers 15 new puzzles a day. You can try our own version on the Canoku emoji sudoku page.
- Canuckle+, a weekly puzzle with a six or seven letter word. The official recap lists the first one as CANUCK, on Monday, March 31, 2025, with a new word every Monday since. Our Canuckle Plus page has a weekly longer word to play too.
A note on sources
Some details about the creators repeated across fan sites, such as specific job titles, family stories about why the game was made and names that were supposedly considered before Canuckle, do not appear in any interview or news story we could check. We have left them out. Where dates differ, we say so: the WordFinder interview page carries two dates (April 21, 2022 in its page data and June 25, 2022 in its byline), while the statistics in it are given as of April 20, 2022.
- WordFinder by YourDictionary, An Inside Look at Canuckle with Co-Creator Mark Rogers (2022)
- FACES Magazine, Canuckle: The Ottawa-Built Word Game Played by Millions Worldwide (April 23, 2026)
- Official Canuckle recap of past puzzles, canucklegame.ca/recap.html
- Wikipedia, Wordle, for Wordle's release, player numbers and sale date
This site is an independent fan site and is not run by the Canuckle creators. The official game is at canucklegame.ca.