If you’ve been online at all in the last few months, you’ve definitely heard of Wordle. The word-guessing game has become an internet phenomenon and a game loved by many, including me. The premise of the game is simple: you have six guesses to try and figure out what the five-letter word of the day is. The game will tell you with color-coded tiles whether or not you got the correct letters in the right spots, the correct letters in the wrong spots, or if the letters are not in the word at all. Everyone has the same word to guess, and it resets with the turn of the clock and the next day.
The game was originally created by Josh Wardle, who played the title off of his last name. Wardle intended Wordle as a game for him and his partner to play, as they were both very into other brain teaser games (including a few from the New York Times game collection). Wardle’s partner, Palak Shah, played a large role in the creation of the game by narrowing down all of the five letter words in the English language to a much smaller list of 2,500 commonly known words. Wardle published the game for the public to play in October of 2021. The game had hit 300,000 daily players a few months after publication, and it had risen to two million the following week after gaining a good amount of traction through trending on social media.
The New York Times purchased Wordle in January, as Wardle stated that the game was too much upkeep. This change in ownership has brought in a bit of criticism, as many of the New York Times’ games are behind a paywall of $1.25 a week, or $40 a year. The NYT has stated that Wordle would “initially” remain free for all users. As of now, the game is free to play once a day, just as it was before, and the general graphics of the game as well as user statistics have seamlessly transferred over for most players, as long as you are continuously playing on the same device.
I have found Wordle to be such a fun part of my day! I have always loved brain-teaser games, and this one is great, as it can be tough but not super impossible. Since the game caps at one word per day, I never feel as though I get sick of the game, and since I always want to do more, it keeps me coming back every day. It is also exciting to be able to share scores with friends, as the game conveniently creates a grid of your scores with different color emoji squares representing your guesses. I know that I will continue to play every day if I can!