The global phenomenon – or at least national phenomenon – that thousands of people start every day off with began as a simple gift from a husband to his wife. This is the gift that keeps on giving, as less than six months after its creation it was bought for at least $1 million by the New York Times. Josh Wardle, a software engineer living in Brooklyn, knew that his wife loved word games and decided to make one just for her. The two loved the game and shared it with the rest of their families, who similarly became obsessed. At the very positive feedback from their relatives, Josh Wardle decided to release it for the rest of the world in October of 2021. He named it “wordle,” as a play on words with his last name. On November 1 only 90 people played wordle. Just over two months later, Wordle had more than 300,000 daily players and as of recently, Wordle has 2 million daily players. The question is: How and why did this simple game grow so big and do it so rapidly.
Wordle’s appeal lies in its very simplicity. Every day, there is a new five-letter word that players are invited to guess in six tries. After guessing your first word, the letters that appear green are in the word of the day and are in the right spot, the letters that appear yellow are in the word of the day but are in the wrong spot and any letters that appear gray are not in the word at all.
Wardle actually said that he had created a prototype similar to Wordle in 2013 but he ended up scrapping it because his friends weren’t impressed by it. It was only in 2020 that he and his wife, Palak Shah, became big fans of the New York Times Spelling Bee and the New York Times daily crossword, so as a way to kill time during the pandemic he came up with a game he thought she would enjoy. The success of Wordle lies in a breakthrough that limits players to only one word (aka one game) per day. It forces players to return every day and it causes you to look forward to that next game. It’s also so simple that one could finish it in less than a minute, making it easy to fit in at any time of the day. Wardle said that “It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day, and that’s it. Like, it doesn’t want any more of your time than that.” Wardle also says that the frequency of the game leaves people wanting more and enforces a sense of scarcity that was partially inspired by the Spelling Bee. Sixteen-year-old player Dylan Gorman says “I play Wordle because it’s a daily challenge and because once I finish it, I feel accomplished.”
The creator of Wordle was also very innovative, yet he stuck to his theme of simplicity when he thought of how to spread and share the game without ruining it. Players originally didn’t have the capacity to share how well or poorly one had done. While players could screenshot their results and send them to friends, that would ruin the game for their friend if they hadn’t played yet, as it would spoil the word of the day. In mid-December, he built an automated way made with emojis to share results. It was a grid that would appear without the letters, showing how many tries you got and the spaces you got green, yellow, or gray. This form of sharing is yet another aspect that Wardle chose to keep simple. If his focus was to make money and grow the game, he could have also made this sharing a form of advertisement. He could have added the link to the game so that it’s easier for others to access and try quickly but he decided against it, as he thought it didn’t look as good and liked the game’s more mysterious air.
This is another important choice that Wardle has made that sets the game apart from others: the lack of any sort of scheme to make money. The game, unlike so many others, is free of ads, flashing banners, or window pop-ups, which lends it an aesthetic, pleasing appeal. Wardle himself said that “I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun…It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.” Wardle was excited to bring this to others because it “demonstrated that the internet could be about something other than money.” Many people now fear that because the New York Times has bought the game, that sometime in the future, the game will no longer be free to the public, but for now, the game remains at no cost.
Wardle’s wife, Ms. Shah, actually says that when she wakes up every day, she plays the Spelling Bee to warm up her mind for the world. After receiving the first game, she actually had a big role in getting it prepared for the public. While Wardle has an original list of the roughly 12,000 five-letter words in the English language, it was Shah who went through these 12,000 words and narrowed it down to around 2,500 words, deciding which words she knew and were guessable and which were too obscure and hard to guess. Despite this, there are still complaints about words being too random and hard to guess. For example, many players were upset by past challenging Wordles, like REBUS, TAPIR or SWILL because the words aren’t familiar enough, or VIVID, because it has two double letters, one of which is the uncommon letter “v.”
To try and combat getting the word on one of the last tries or not getting it at all, people have even created strategies. Many players start with the same word every day, like ADIEU (because it’s vowel heavy), IRATE (because it has three vowels and two of the most popular consonants in the English language), TREAD, OCEAN or STEAK, for similar reasons. Many players are religiously dedicated to the word they start with. Students Dylan Gorman and Claire Markstein say that they start with IRATE everyday because it hasn’t led them astray yet. Student Ella Jaffe uses EARTH every day. Another student, Carly Weisblum, says she switches between using LATER and RATES as her starting words. Other players are even more tactical, understanding that there are only 26 letters in the alphabet and 25 letter slots in your first 5 tries. This means that if you use words that have all different letters, you will know all the letters in the word and from there, should be able to get the word. Five words that contain all the letters of the alphabet are Brick, Jumpy, Waqfs, Vozhd, and Glent. Although this completely misses the fun of the game, it does insure that you get the word. Other players use no strategy and play solely for fun, choosing random words that come to their mind that aren’t proven to be statistically better, like words with the same letter twice.
Despite this, the debate of “luck” vs “skill” is a substantial one. Do players get the word in their second, third or fourth tries because of their skill or solely because of luck? Player Dylan Gorman says that “When I get a word quickly, it’s often because the word was an ‘easier’ one, so I think the game has more to do with luck. Occasional player Carly Weisblum says, “It’s all luck. You never know, you could get the word on the first try or you could get all the letters but one and then spend your next 5 tries trying different letters. For example, when the word was TROVE, many players had to go through PROVE, DROVE and GROVE until they got to TROVE.” On the other hand, Claire Markstien thinks it is about skill because “You look at your past words to make sure you don’t put the letters in the same spot if they don’t belong there and then you have to be skillful at thinking of words that fit your parameters.” Teacher Mr. Botella thinks a little differently, saying it’s “luck, but skill too. Students can come up with words that fit faster than I can and that’s all about skill.” Ella Jaffe thinks that if you get the word “very quickly, like on the second or third spot, it’s luck but if you get it a little later, then you have used skill because you’re building off the past information.”
The game’s true success can be measured by its spinoffs and all the other games it has inspired. If you weren’t one of the first 90 players on November 1st but you’re now one of the 2 million fans, you’re in luck, because you can play “Wordle archives” where you can play every past Wordle. The collection is over 200 words big and players can choose specific days to do the Wordle or a random Wordle. One can also play “Wordle unlimited,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Players have an unlimited supply of rounds and can play and guess different five-letter words, abiding by all the same rules of Wordle, but the words aren’t the daily words that Shah and Wardle picked. For music fans, you can play a spinoff called “Heardle,” a game in which every day you are given a new song title that you have to guess in six tries or less. Wordle is so big that your favorite singer might even have a Wordle game all to themselves, where players have to guess five-letter words related to them or their music. For example, some popular spinoffs are “Taylordle” for Taylor Swift and “Wordlerry” for Harry Styles. People have even created “Nerdle” for math lovers and “Subwaydle” for people who know the subway and all its routes and connections well. “Quordle” is my personal favorite spinoff, as it’s just like Wordle, put quadruple the fun and difficulty. Players have to guess four five-letter words in nine total guesses. You have four charts all laid out and the words you guess in one box apply to all the other boxes. It’s slightly confusing when you begin, so they even offer a “practice mode” to either begin with, or to play while you wait for the next day’s “quordle.” An 11th grade student says that “the only wordle spinoffs I’ve played are the Taylor Swift wordle and Quordle, which is harder because it’s 4 wordles together in one big game.”
Another question the game raises is, Is this game only for English speakers and people with big vocabularies? My answer is no. While having a good vocabulary helps, a small vocabulary shouldn’t prevent you from playing as the game can be very luck- and pattern-based and players can guess the word, even if they don’t particularly know it. Dylan Gorman says “if you have a stronger vocabulary then Wordle is definitely for you. It makes the game easier and if you don’t have a bigger vocabulary, it can be more of a struggle to get the word.” My own father, who is not a fluent English speaker, enjoys playing Wordle in order to grow his vocabulary and practice his English, even if he doesn’t know all the words he’s guessing.
The game has grown so much that it has even entered classrooms. A fourth grade teacher called Miss Hunter plays Wordle every day with her class in order to grow their vocabulary and create a collaborative, fun learning space. She projects it on the whiteboard and everyone gets to offer up words to begin with and the class votes for one word. Wordle is so big that it’s even spanned into Fieldston’s very own classrooms. My own physics teacher, Mr. Botella, plays Wordle with our class on occasion to take a break from class. He says, “I think teaching is about having relationships with your students and I try to do things that will make students happy so spending a few minutes with Wordle helps students learn physics because they’re in a better mood. Productive teaching is about establishing rapport and Wordle helps do that.” A student in this class says “I love doing Wordle in physics! It’s fun to do it together as a class and challenge ourselves to get the correct word. It’s fun to collaborate as one big team as opposed to doing it alone.”
Wordle’s popularity comes as no surprise. It’s easy to play, simple, fun and not time consuming. If you’re looking for a quick game you can share with friends and family (and even spur a bit of competitive spirit) wordle is the game for you.
