What the block is this new green and yellow game that is becoming an internet obsession?
Seen all those posts featuring yellow, green and grey boxes? Yep, that’s Wordle. In 2021, 90 people started playing, but as of 2022, 2.7 million players were hooked on the game.
The online game was created by Welsh-born Josh Wardle, a former employee at social news website Reddit. The software engineer first came up with the game in 2013, creating a prototype for his friends to play.
But they didn’t take to it, and he retired it. Wardle revisited the game during the pandemic, and after proving popular with family members, he decided to take it public.
Though Josh Wardle invented the game, he no longer owns Wordle. The New York Times bought Wordle from him in February 2022. Though an exact figure wasn’t shared, Wordle sold the game for a price “in the low seven figures”.
However, some players were not happy when this transition occurred.
Those still playing the daily word game on the original website – because they downloaded it or have not refreshed their browser – are getting different words to solve from the original version.
“That is because the paper removed five-letter words it deemed offensive,” says the BBC.
Besides the fact that it’s for free, has no ads and is on a website link, Wordle is simple and, like a crossword, can only be played once a day.
As shown above, if you have the correct letter in the right spot, it shows up green. A valid letter in the wrong area shows up yellow. A letter that isn’t in the word in any site shows grey.
CNET explains that “you can enter a total of six words, meaning you can enter five-burner terms from which you can learn hints about the letters and their placements.”
Then you get one chance to put those hints to use. Or you can try for performance and guess the word of the day in three, two or even one go.
Wordle is simple stuff but also incredibly compelling, I guess.