Star Wars. Game of Thrones. Harry Potter. Avocado toast. Taylor Swift. Anytime something becomes suddenly very popular, it becomes likewise as popular to hate the thing people like. It becomes a badge of honor. “Am I the only one who doesn’t like [popular thing]?” becomes the smug refrain of these contrarians, as if their snubbing of the popular thing gives them some sort of superiority over the rest of the crowd. The newest target is the suddenly popular puzzle game, Wordle.
If you are on social media, especially Facebook or Twitter, you’ve likely seen them: cryptic posts of several rows of green, yellow, and gray or black boxes. To those who don’t play, it’s meaningless clutter in their feed. To those in the know, it’s a story against which one can compare their own efforts and determine how they measured up on that day’s puzzle. It’s passive competition.
So what is the story of Wordle? It’s a fairly simple word game: You start out with a 5×6 grid of boxes. You begin by guessing a random five letter word and typing it into the first row. If any of the letters appear in the solution, they will turn yellow. If they are not only correct but in the right place, they turn green. Then, using what you learned in your first guess, you guess again. You have 6 attempts to guess the word. That’s all there is to it. It’s less than five minutes, typically.
Here’s an example. This was puzzle number 216, and there were 6 attempts made before the word was correctly guessed:
Wordle 216 6/6
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟨🟩🟩⬜🟨
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Once you are finished, you have an option to share the results of your attempt. If you share, you share only colored blocks as shown above, so as not to ruin the game for anyone else. That is what you are seeing in the social media feeds. A Wordle share post is a mini-story that tells other players how well you did on that day’s game. They in turn can see how their own performance stacked up. In my first play, I guessed on the third try and thought I was some sort of prodigy; turns out that’s not uncommon. The key is whether it was uncommon on that particular day’s puzzle.
Wordle is a fairly new game. It was created by a man named John Wardle – how perfect is that? – who wanted to design a game for his partner, an avid word game enthusiast. She enjoyed it, so he shared it with his family. In October, he put it online for the world, and slowly it caught fire and became the new thing to love/hate. You won’t find it in the app store (though you will find knock off versions.) It is a simple game, once a day, and that’s part of the appeal.
Few such popular corners of the internet are as low-frills as the website, which Mr. Wardle built himself as a side project. There are no ads or flashing banners; no windows pop up or ask for money. There is merely the game on a black background.
“I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun,” Mr. Wardle said in an interview on Monday. “It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.”
Those who roll their eyes at the colored blocks in their feed and find self-satisfaction in being Different Because They Don’t Play Wordle are missing out on a fun, free, few minutes of daily brain exercise. Also, they are missing out on why this Ben Shapiro tweet from this morning was so damn hilarious:
This is what we call an inside joke, and the Wordle haters missed this glorious bit of self-deprecating humor by the love-him-or-loathe him Mr. Shapiro.
You see, today’s Wordle was PRICK.
I’ll admit to taking a swipe at Wordle-ites.
It’s not at all that I eschew word games, it’s the posting of it on social media by folks who love to throw stones about others being sheep and lemmings. Irony is dead.
I mean, if you don’t post your results are you really even playing? Further, if you fail after six tries, can you post those results? All my friends seem to have never lost.Report
The genius of the game is that its incredibly hard not to get it within six tries. Once you run out of tried letters and get a couple right guesses, it all falls into place. And you only need to get five right.Report
Here me out…what if Worldle is one big psyop? Get everyone hooked by giving them one try a day in a game that is “incredibly hard not to get within six tries” so they feel like smartie-pantses and then start introducing words like “purge,” “drown,” “clash,” “brawl,” “scorn,” “erase” in ever escalating frequency until the whole player community is wound tighter than a bad facelift. Then….someone should write that movie.Report
Thank you, Em. Thank you for introducing me to Wordles. If my wife knew you, she would also thank you.Report
IMO, a big part of its appeal is that there’s only one a day. You can’t go back and play past games. So you need to play.
The “don’t give it away and blow the fun for others” is very much a Crying Game style “NO SPOILERS!” dynamic and it is also part of the fun.
If you don’t like word games, or otherwise find this thing annoying, just mute “WORDLE” on your twitter or facebook feed. If you didn’t know how to do that already, this is an excellent opportunity to learn how to do that.Report
Yeah. If I could play it multiple times, I’d have played it a dozen times the first time I saw it and then I would have never given it another thought.Report
…there’s only one a day. You can’t go back and play past games.
Speak for yourself, non-programmer :^)Report
I admit to having that sort of feeling about other crazes, though I wouldn’t usually express it publicly; but I joined the crowd with Wordle after reading the NYT article. It’s enjoyable enough, a quick dopamine hit before I get on with the day.
I’m the word puzzle freak in my family, but my non-puzzle-addicted wife consistently does better than I do on it. My working hypothesis is that my larger vocabulary and my experience with more difficult games slows me down — I can think of a bunch of possibilities for different letter combinations and I’m carefully trying to account for the possibility of something like “taxon” or “lulls”, while she goes with the first word she thinks of, and the fact that the answers are always normal common words means that her approach is better. I’m not sure if this is correct, but it has the advantage of salving my ego.
Sorry I didn’t see that Ben Shapiro tweet at the time — it would’ve gotten a solid chuckle. Looks like it was a little too subtle for a lot of the repliers.Report
Wordle is an old game, though not under that name. I used to play it as a pencil-and-paper game with my brother when we were young: both players would choose a word, and the goal was to solve it first. There was also a version of it on the Roku.Report
Are you thinking of Jotto? I used to play it with my mom, and playing a few rounds of Wordle inspired me to download a Jotto app. Wordle is a lot simpler — it tells you exactly which letters from your guess are in the target word, and which are in the right position.Report
I remember well playing this game with Mike. We were both kids, but even though he is 6 years my junior, he often won. The game was called “Word Duel.” It was sold as a pad of paper — each page had spaces for your secret word and your guesses. It was actually harder than Wordle — your opponent would tell you only how many letters in your guess word were the same letter in the same position — not how many letters matched out of position, and in no case did your opponent tell you which letters they were.Report
You remember it better than I do. But, yeah, those games would go on and on, where it’s unusual not to solve a Wordle in six.Report
Exactly! I learned about Word Duel in school about 50 years ago. Didn’t know about the pad, though.Report
Does anyone remember Mastermind?Report
YAAASSSSSSSS! With the little colored pegs and the tiny cover you’d flip over when your opponent won? I think our box had a gentlemen on it wearing a suit or tuxedo or something? It was only for very highly intelligent people (as indicated by the photo on the box).Report
We had a full size game and a mini one for car trips. We were obsessed with it.Report
Thanks, Em. Was tinkering with a post on this but you did it way better than I could. Really enjoying this little fad. Hope it stays with us for a while.Report
I like it. And I like the sharing on social media. A lot of my Twitter mutuals do it, and we can commiserate over hard ones, or chuckle over certain words (the one you referenced, for example, though that’s rare that there’s a double entendre – there is also a four-letter word game parody of it called Sweardle, where you have to guess swear words. (though their definition is loose: one day “Pube” was the answer, which I did not get)
I dunno. I feel like the people snarking on it have never had the experience (that I have had) of being very much on the Outside for much of their lives and finally finding something that lets them feel like a bit of an Insider.Report
Relevant Cartoon:
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