Wordle: The new craze

By Kate Hangen, 2024

Published 3/8/22

By now you’ve probably heard of Wordle. But what's this game that’s taken the nation by storm? Created by Josh Wardle, Wordle was made for his crossword-loving partner, Palak Shan. The game was initially private, but after gaining popularity with their relatives and friends, Wardle decided to make it public in October 2021. Wordle was not initially successful. However, a few months after it was released, the game began gaining popularity. The game rose from 90 users on November 1, 2021, to over 300,000 users on January 2, 2022. Its limited availability could be credited to its quick rise to fame. A new word is released every 24 hours, so users can only solve one puzzle a day. It is just enough for users to get addicted to using it, but not get bored of the website.

So how is Wordle played? The object of the game is to guess a five-letter word in six tries. Once a word is guessed, each letter in the word is marked with a green, yellow, or gray tile. Green means the letter is in the correct spot, yellow means the letter is in the word but is in the wrong spot, and gray means the letter is not in the word at all. Using these hints, players guess additional words, hoping each guess will give them more green tiles until every tile is green.

On January 31, 2022, the New York Times Company bought Wordle for an undisclosed amount of money. This came with plenty of backlash from Wordle’s now millions of adoring fans. Some thought the company would now make users pay to play. Others thought the game would lose its charm with the new owners. Many just didn’t like the idea of something once owned by an individual being taken over by a big corporation.

On February 10th, Wordle was moved to The New York Times website. There was little change to Wordle with its new owners, with the exception that several offensive words were taken off the world list so users could no longer use them as valid guesses. There was speculation that the New York Times made the words harder after worlds like cynic, tacit, and caulk made many lose their winning streaks. However, the daily word is not chosen or even random for that matter. The program uses a set list of words (which you can find on the Internet if you’re curious) to decide the word of the day. This means The New York Times is not to blame for the increasing difficulty of Wordle, it's simply just an unlucky coincidence.