If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you’ve probably seen Wordle scores and color block grids flooding your feed.
Wordle is an online word game where everyone is given the same five-letter word each day that you have to guess in six tries or less. After each of the words you guess, the color tiles of each letter will change color. A gray square means that letter isn’t in the word of the day, a yellow square means that letter is in the word of the day but in the incorrect spot, and a green square means that letter is in the word of the day and is in the correct spot.
Once you guess the word correctly or you run out of guesses, you can see your stats of how many words you’ve gotten correctly and how many tries you usually take. You can also share your daily results on social media or text them, and it will show up as a grid of green, yellow and gray squares that match up with how you guessed the words without showing the actual word.
Many people cite its shareability as the cause of the rise in popularity. There are no shortages of word games online, but Wordle allows you to share your grids and strategies without spoiling the word of the day.
Josh Wardle created Wordle in October for his partner, who loves word games. It started out as something they played with family and friends but soon grew exponentially. On Nov. 1, 2021, Wordle had just 90 users — on Jan. 2022, it had over 300,000 users. Wardle is a former software engineer for Reddit and collaborated on popular projects on Reddit, The Button and Place.
You can play Wordle on a desktop browser or mobile device at https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/.
When Wordle began to gain popularity, fans strategized and shared their favorite words to start with. Here are three fan-favorite start words:
- Adieu. People like this word because it contains four vowels, which is the largest amount of vowels in any five-letter word.
- Stare. A and E are some of the most commonly used vowels, and S, T and R are some of the most commonly used consonants.
- Tears. People like this word for the same reasons as “stare,” but this word also gives you a better idea if the word of the day is plural.
The New York Times purchased Wordle on Jan. 31, 2022, for a price in “the low seven figures” as a part of their goal to reach 10 million subscribers by the year 2025. The New York Times stated that Wordle will “initially remain free to new and existing users.” However, much of The New York Times’ content is behind a paywall, and many are already suspecting it will soon be behind a paywall as well. For many, it seems that Wordle came as fast as it went, and while the future of Wordle remains unclear, it’s, without a doubt, a fun, no-frills game that, rightfully so, became the latest Internet c-r-a-z-e.