Marcus Congdon, Journalist • January 12, 2024
Wordle, a popular word connection game found on the New York Times is loved by many around the world
In 2021, the game Wordle took the country by storm. Now it’s nothing more than an afterthought to many people. In this game, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with feedback given for each guess in the form of colored tiles indicating when letters match or occupy the correct position. This never-before-seen concept and unique strategy intrigued people of all ages to try the game for the first time.
Wordle Creator, Josh Wardle, initially created this game to play with his partner. The mechanics of this game are based on a pen-and-paper game, Jotto, that was popular in the 1950s, and the television franchise named Lingo. Wardle released this game to the public in October of 2021, but it didn’t take off until December when he added the ability for players to copy their daily results as emoji squares, which were widely shared on Twitter.
What made this game special was that everyone had the same word to try to solve each day. Because of this mechanic of the game, lots of competition sprouted from sending scores. The need to best your friends and family every day caused people to try and formulate new and improved strategies. TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram were filled with people sharing their ideas on how to get the lowest score possible consistently.
On January 1, 2023, Wordle was bought by the New York Times for approximately one million dollars. With the transfer of Wordle to the New York Times game website, many were afraid that the game was going to be ruined. Fortunately, Wordle remained unchanged.
Many Wordle copies were created by others trying to replicate the glory of the original. Although many stuck with the original, others got hooked by the new Wordle knockoffs that were being released. Over the next months, the game saw a decline in the player count. While the game was once a viral sensation, it seems that players are losing interest in it. Over the last year, the global interest in Wordle has dropped by nearly 70% according to Google Trend.
