Wordle: What You Need to Know About the Wildly Popular Word Game

If you’ve been at all active on Twitter in recent weeks, chances are you’ve encountered—or, better yet, participated in—Wordle.

The word game, which has a touching history involving a Brooklyn-based software engineer, is built atop simple (though still engaging and quite often challenging) rules. As part of the experience, many players (including some household names) have taken up the task of sharing their game results on Twitter and elsewhere, driving more and more people to join in on the daily solves.

Below, we take a closer look at Wordle, including info on how it started and where it may be going from here.

Wordle is a web-based word game wherein players are given six tries to guess the five-letter “wordle.” Upon each guess being submitted, the tile colors of the given mystery word are changed to show players how accurate (or inaccurate) their attempted solve was. New challenges are issued on a daily basis.

Here’s what the instructional screen looks like just before starting up a player’s six guesses:

Per a recent New York Times piece, Wordle was started by software engineer Josh Wardle, who previously worked with Reddit. Wardle created the experience for his partner Palak Shah, a big fan of word games, and went on to share it with family.

At the top of last November, 90 people are said to have played. For the Wordle on Jan. 2, per the Times, more than 300,000 people participated.

As mentioned above, the popularity of Wordle has been skyrocketing in recent weeks, thanks in part to the ease with which gameplay results are shared via social media. 

Jimmy Fallon, for example, recently shouted out the game for his 51.4 million Twitter followers, saying he had become “addicted” to it.

Below, get a glimpse at more of what people have been saying about their own experiences with Wordle, including reminders about inaccessibility with regards to players tweeting out results.

Simply click this link to join in on the Wordle mania. As for whether an app-ified version or other expansion is on the horizon, keep reading for insight from Wardle himself.

Wardle has received praise from many players for his stance on how to best move forward after the game’s success.

Most notably, in a recent discussion with BBC Radio 4’s Today show, Wardle stated that he’s “a bit suspicious” of apps due to their built-in demands on one’s attention. “There are also no ads and I am not doing anything with your data, and that is also quite deliberate,” Wardle said.

So, for the foreseeable future, it seems like the Wordle experience will remain one rooted in blissfully ad-free simplicity. What’s not to love about that?