Wordle: millions consumed by a simple yet compelling game

A lucky few guesses allowed me to guess this word in 3 tries.

I love Wordle. 

I don’t think I’m alone: over 2 million people play Wordle each day. 

For those of you who don’t know what Wordle is, Wordle is a simple, slightly addicting, online game where the player tries to guess a five-letter word in less than six guesses. The letters in guessed words are color-coded based on their correctness: a gray letter means it’s not in the word, yellow means it’s in the word but in the wrong position and green means it’s in the right position. 

Wordle is a browser-based game, something that confused some people when they downloaded the game — which, at the time the browser-based Wordle went viral, did not include the game where users guess a five-letter word in six guesses —  off of the App Store. The creator of this other word game, Steve Cravotta, actually ended up donating all the money he made from in-app transactions to charity. 

Unlike many others, I did not discover Wordle by seeing a grid of gray, yellow and green boxes on my Instagram page. I discovered it a few weeks ago while reading the news on my phone.

Poetically, Wordle ended up replacing my daily news brief when I ate breakfast every morning. Now, I read the breaking news, and immediately hop onto Wordle for my daily dose. 

Every morning, I start by guessing the word, “adieu.” Everyone has a different strategy, but I like this word because it contains four vowels. Afterward, I try to incorporate the correct letters from “adieu” and add the vowel “o” or other common letters like “y.” Then, it’s just a guessing game until I, hopefully, get the right answer. Fingers crossed, but so far I haven’t lost a single Wordle. 

For me, Wordle is compelling for a few reasons.

One — you only get one puzzle per day. By limiting the number of times you can play, Wordle doesn’t become boring, and it turns into something that I look forward to playing every morning while eating cereal. 

I’ve played other similar word games in the past, such as Wordscapes, which is a game where a player has to fill out a “crossword” by creating words from a six-letter bank of letters. I played that game a lot when I traveled to China, but it soon became boring, not because the game wasn’t fun, but because I simply played it too much.

Two — everyone gets the same puzzle. It’s great to be able to talk to people about how difficult or easy the day’s puzzle was. The day after I completed my first Wordle the person who sat next to me asked, “Did you get today’s Wordle?” I felt a great sense of satisfaction at our exchange, probably because I only ever play single-player games. 

This social aspect of the game spreads the word about the game in a fun, entertaining way, as players have the option to share their results (spoiler-free) on social media platforms, using emojis to depict their daily results. 

Recently, the game was sold to The New York Times to be eventually folded into its subscription game package. It’s supposed to “initially remain free,” but I’m skeptical about how long that will last. But when it does start costing money, I’m not sure I will pay for the NYT games bundle. 

There are other versions of Wordle out there, such as Wordle Archive and Wordle Unlimited, both of which are also browser based. A simple “wordle” search on the app store also yields numerous other versions of Wordle as well, including the other World made by Cravotta, which was recently updated with a new gamemode which is almost an exact copy of Wordle. 

But that’s all in the future. If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t yet played Wordle, you should hop on your browser, search for Wordle and start your addiction.