There are two kinds of people in the world: those who play Wordle and those who are tired of hearing about Wordle. The daily word game, which became an international obsession during the pandemic, has managed to survive the notoriously short attention span of the internet. Nearly five years after its debut, people still wake up, reach for their phones, and attempt to identify a five-letter word before coffee.
Some take it very seriously. There are winning streaks to protect, statistics to analyze, and elaborate theories about which opening word provides the greatest strategic advantage. A bad Wordle can ruin an otherwise pleasant morning.
I started a few years ago because my son was playing. My success rate is 95 percent, which sounds respectable until you consider that the remaining five percent represents a collection of humiliating defeats at the hands of five-letter words. I’ve recently started working through the archives to chase an elusive one percent improvement.
Wordle began as a love story; a charming origin for something that inspires so much competitive anxiety. Software engineer Josh Wardle created the game for his partner, Palak Shah, who loved word puzzles. The name was a play on his surname. After sharing it with family and friends, Wardle released it publicly in October 2021.
According to The New York Times, the game became such an obsession among Wardle’s relatives that their family WhatsApp conversation was overrun by discussions of five-letter words. On November 1, 2021, Wordle had 90 players. By early January 2022, more than 300,000. Eventually, millions joined the daily ritual, with over 3.5 million or so average players per day.
The New York Times purchased Wordle in January 2022 for an undisclosed sum described as being in the low seven figures—not a bad payday for a game with 30 squares and a limited vocabulary. The brilliance of Wordle lies in its simplicity. Players get six attempts to guess the same five-letter word. Green squares indicate correct letters in the correct positions, yellow squares indicate letters in the wrong positions, and gray squares eliminate possibilities.
Everyone gets the same puzzle each day. The shared experience transforms a solitary pastime into a worldwide conversation. In a TechCrunch interview, Wardle explained that limiting the game to one puzzle per day was intentional. Having worked in Silicon Valley, he was suspicious of games designed to monopolize people’s attention. He also understood something about human nature. People enjoy having a shared challenge, particularly one that gives them something harmless to discuss.
Then there’s the peculiar business of sharing results. Wordle’s now-famous grid allows players to announce accomplishments without revealing the answer. A successful two-guess game practically demands public recognition. A six-guess victory feels like escaping a burning building. Losing altogether is the sort of information people would prefer to keep between themselves and their phones. The monthly archive calendar shames you with a hollow star indicating you finished the puzzle but failure-failed to solve it.
The sharing feature wasn’t part of the original game. Wardle added it after noticing that an early player in New Zealand was manually posting colored emoji squares to communicate her results. The internet promptly turned a word puzzle into a competitive spectator sport. Opening-word strategy has become its own minor academic discipline.
In a 2022 New York Times analysis, researchers discovered that only 28 percent of experienced players consistently used the same opening word. The most popular choice was ADIEU, because like me, people enjoy getting four vowels out of the way immediately. Other favorites include CRANE, SLATE, TRACE, and STARE.
The Times developed WordleBot, which analyzes your performance and offers advice about how you could’ve played more efficiently. Apparently, having a computer evaluate your intelligence after you’ve already been defeated by a word like NYMPH is somebody’s idea of entertainment. But there’s nothing like getting another “Beat the Bot” badge for your ego.
In 2022, Kotaku reported that mathematicians had attempted to identify the mathematically optimal opening word. CRANE emerged as a leading contender. The article’s headline suggested that mathematics had managed to ruin something perfectly enjoyable. Wordle has also produced its share of international incidents. In January 2022, British players became furious when the answer was FAVOR, the American spelling of FAVOUR. The Washington Post covered the Boston tea party level outrage caused by the seemingly harmless word puzzle. There have been stranger controversies. When FETUS appeared as an answer during the national abortion debate in 2022, the Times attempted to replace it, although some players still received the original word.
Wordle eventually acquired a human editor, Tracy Bennett, who began curating daily answers in November 2022. This introduced another controversy: whether the puzzle should contain words connected to holidays or current events. Thanksgiving-themed answers included FEAST and DRIVE, prompting accusations that the game was becoming too predictable.
The game’s influence extends beyond its own little grid. There are countless variations, including Quordle, which requires solving four words simultaneously, and absurdly ambitious versions involving dozens of puzzles. I enjoy the Wordle in One bonus game in the NYT app.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the emotional investment people develop in something so inconsequential. In Wordle, success creates a tiny burst of satisfaction, while failed puzzles inspire an astonishing amount of self-loathing. But tomorrow, regardless of what happened today, everyone gets a new daily opportunity at redemption before breakfast. Which reminds me: I need to find out my son's success rate. He may be the athlete in the family, but I'm not above beating him at a sport we can play in our pajamas.