Here's where I come from:
Decades ago I learned to play a word game which was more like MasterMind than Wordle, and it could be played with just pen and paper (later I have played it over sms, and over gratis bank transfers):
Each participant writes down a secret 5-letter word (unique letters, singular nouns, no verbs) and take turns to guess the oppponent's word. The only clue you get for each guess, is how many correct letters your guess has. You do not get to know which letters are correct, if any, nor if they are correctly placed. It's a bit more challenging than Wordle, something that justifies the restrictions, but even with Wordle I think it's reasonable to use just the “root dictionary words”, if I may call them so.