What 3 Words

what3words divides the world into three-metre squares and gives every square a name made of three ordinary words. The bot is the Telegram end of that idea: send a location and it returns the three words for it; send three words and it returns the point on the map.

The case for it is the case for the whole scheme — a spot with no address. Meeting at a specific bench in a park, a delivery to the back gate of a warehouse, an entrance to a beach that the map knows only as a coastline. Three words survive being read aloud over a bad phone line, which a string of coordinates does not.

Two things are worth knowing before you rely on it. The word grid is a proprietary system, not an open standard, so the other side needs the app, the site or this bot to decode it; and neighbouring squares can carry similar-sounding words, so it pays to read them back. The bot itself is free and needs no account.