Wordle. To some, a playful and artfully executed exercise in mental pliability. To others, a childish fad, a trivial concept that congratulates lucky guesswork. One thing’s for sure: Wordle is the latest mass-media craze. In the style of “logic puzzle meets word puzzle,” Wordle challenges the player to guess an unknown 5-letter word within six guesses.
Before spilling onto social media, Wordle was the side project of New York-based programmer Josh Wardle (yes, the name of the game is a pun). Inspired by the New York Times Crossword and Spelling Bee, he originally created the game to play with his partner in his free time. Raised in South Wales, Wardle graduated from the University of London with a degree in Media Arts. Some years later, after moving to the United States, he completed a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Art at the University of Oregon. He has had a rich career: he worked as product manager at Reddit, and with the Brooklyn art collective “MSCHF”, he designed the “Satan Shoes” for Lil Nas X. He is the brother of documentary filmmaker Tim Wardle.
Josh Wardle put aside his word project as early as 2013, returning to the program during quarantine. The New York Times reports that on November 1st, the game had around 90 players, soon amassing 300,000 devoted Wordlers in two months’ time.
How It Works
For the record, I would like to state that I have a Wordle streak of 53 days, much more than any of you noobs can say.
At the time of this article’s publication, many millions of people flock to the Wordle website every day. I therefore assume that you have played it before and know the ropes. If not, though, let me break it down.
You start with a blank slate. There is a five-letter word you must guess. You do not know this word. As soon as you enter a guess, you’ll see each letter in your answer turn either yellow, green, or gray. Gray means the letter is not in the word. Yellow means the letter is in the word, but it’s in the wrong position. Green means the letter is in the word and in the right position. Let’s say today’s Wordle is HEART. If your guess is SPARE, the letter ‘E’ will turn yellow. ‘E’ appears in HEART, but in the second spot, not the last. ‘A’ and ‘R’ will turn green because they’re in the same spots as in HEART. Finally, ‘S’ and ‘P’ will turn gray because they are nowhere to be found in HEART. Sometimes—and this is where the game gets difficult— the word will have repeating letters, like ‘vivid,’ a recent Wordle answer that stumped many players.
The game ends in two ways: either you guess the word and you win, or your sixth guess is unsuccessful and you lose. At this point, the game invites you to share your results in the form of emojis. You’ve probably seen the green and yellow squares all across social media. They look something like this:
These intrusive tiles have proven to be the secret to Wordle’s success. Wardle did not initially implement this feature, but when he did, the game suddenly exploded. Just about every Wordle copycat out there will offer to share your results with other people, often with a link to the website attached to your message.
Want More?
Some avid Wordlers who can’t get enough have flocked to spin-offs and clones of the game. There’s Primel, where instead of letters you’re guessing the numbers in a five-digit prime number. Or, perhaps for the polyglots, you might enjoy Le Mot (in French) and Wordle ES (in Spanish). The most intriguing is Semantle, where you are given hints on the similarity of your guess to the answer. If the answer is “speak” and you guess “fruit,” it will give you a very low similarity score. But if you guess “say,” your similarity score will go way up.
There’s plenty more around, but Wordle’s once-a-day schedule has proven more effective in engaging players than unlimited play. Many have found that, upon visiting “Wordle databases,” where you are allowed to play through months of past puzzles, you quickly lose interest. Chugging through dozens of Wordles at once defeats the fun of the game. It feels like a task more than a fun treat. Instead of a sweet dessert, it’s a bland and tired porridge.
Plus, Wordle builds camaraderie. Every day you challenge yourself to beat that one friend who somehow gets the Wordle in three guesses. “Rats! I got it in five! Today’s was hard!” you exclaim. But like a game of Monopoly, one vain player can ruin the experience for everyone. Since everyone gets the same word, if one person says the answer out loud, everyone knows it. Great, now I have to wait a day to play again.
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