A word puzzle that gained popularity in 2021, Wordle is a web game where players have six attempts to guess a five letter word. When a user guesses a word, the squares either stay gray, turn yellow, or turn green. If a square is gray, it means that letter does not appear anywhere in the word. If a square turns yellow, the letter appears in the word, but in a different space. If the square turns green, both the letter and the placement are correct! Through a process of elimination, the user attempts to get the target word in the least tries!
The New York Times | graphic
“I wanted to beat my dad. He was like ‘I’m so good at Wordle,’ and I was like, ‘how do I beat you? How do I prove you wrong?.”
— Rachel Everett, lit mag staffer
The creator of Wordle, Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle, made the puzzle widely available in October 2021. Wardle first developed a prototype of the game in 2013 during his employment at Reddit. It wasn’t until 2021, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, that Wardle returned to his 2013 prototype. During the pandemic, Wardle and his partner, Palak Shah, often indulged in The NYT daily word puzzles– like Spelling Bee, but Wardle wanted to create another word puzzle for his partner. Thus, from January to June 2021, Shah and Wardle were the sole users of Wordle, before they shared it with friends and family. Before the game went public, Shah whittled down the thousands of five-letter words in the English language to a more accessible 2,500.
In October 2021, Wardle published his game, and by the beginning of November, 90 users used the puzzle (within a month!). A month later, the game had 300,000 users and by the following week, this number was at a whopping 2 million.
Time Magazine | photography
Wordle’s popularity stemmed from a time when everyone was stuck at home, looking for some way to connect with other people— whether it be crosswords or Wordle. However, it’s gameplay extended far beyond the guessing of a five-letter word as Wardle initially created.
In fact, the gameplay’s versatility created options for everyone to explore! If you liked music, there was Heardle— where a user aims to guess a song while listening to only a second at a time. If you liked geography, there was Worldle— where a user was given the outline of a country and six guesses, with each guess getting a corresponding distance to how far the guess is from the actual country!
“I always liked geography, and Worldle was a good way for me to practice. Even if it doesn’t necessarily count as ‘studying,’ I still feel like I learn a little something new each time I guess the countries.”
— Tripp Sandifer, GSU student
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Newsweek | graphic
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