Wordle is an online word-guessing game that first became popular in 2021. The game’s success has been credited to its simple play and the ease of sharing game results on social media. In addition, only one Wordle puzzle is made available each day, which encourages playing every day and leaves players wanting more.
The game’s layout consists of a simple grid with six rows and five columns. Each day, players have six chances to guess a five-letter word. With each guess, Wordle highlights any letters that are in the word of the day. If a letter is in the right position, it is highlighted in green. If a letter is in the word but in the wrong position, the box is highlighted in yellow. The game ends when the player either guesses the word correctly or runs out of attempts.
Wordle makes it easy for players to share their daily results on social media without spoiling the answer. When a player completes or fails the daily puzzle, Wordle displays the player’s accumulated statistics and a share button. The button creates a block of colored square emojis that represent the player’s grid. Players can post the block on social media to give others an idea of how the game went without revealing the answer or their guesses.
The Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle developed Wordle for his family and friends while living in Brooklyn, New York. The game’s name is a play on Wardle’s last name. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which was declared in 2020, Wardle and his partner had become avid players of the word games featured in The New York Times, for example the daily crossword puzzles. After sharing Wordle among a small group of friends and family, Wardle made the game public in October 2021. By the start of 2022, the game had hundreds of thousands of players around the world. On Jan. 31, 2022, The New York Times announced that they had purchased the game from Wardle for over $1 million.
