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by Carson Hadley
Managing Editor
_o_ _l_. Wo_ _l_. Wo_dle. Wordle. Everyone from political newscasters to late-night talk show hosts to your neighbor’s grandma is playing it.
Created by Welsh-born software developer Josh Wardle, “Wordle” is a simple online game where players attempt to guess a word. The game was released in Oct. 2021, but didn’t gain widespread popularity until mid-December.
On Jan. 31, Wardle announced that he had sold the game to the NY Times. Reportedly, the game sold for an amount somewhere in the “low seven digits.” With the shift in ownership, the mechanics of the game remained unchanged.
To complete Wordle, players start by entering a five-letter word. The letters of the word will then change color depending on if you got them right or not. If you guessed the right letter in the correct spot, the letter will turn green.
If you guess a letter right, but it’s in the wrong place in the word, it will turn yellow. Letters that don’t appear in the word at all remain gray. Each day, players get six attempts to guess the word correctly.
It might sound complicated, but in actuality, the rules of “Wordle” are very easy to understand. This, combined with the fact that it is 100 percent free to play, has no doubt contributed to its popularity. The game has become a worldwide sensation, and is currently available in 91 different languages.
“Wordle” is even slowly making its way through the halls of NS. Though currently only seven percent of students actively play the game, nearly 22 percent have heard of it.
Junior Ava Sunderland is a fan of the game and plays it regularly.
“Every day,” Sunderland said. “[I started] at the beginning of January.”
To Sunderland, Wordle is a competition with her family to see who can get the word in the fewest attempts. For others, the game is more of a mental test.
“Wordle is definitely a mental exercise,” said web development teacher Felipe Gonzalez. “You have to think a lot to find the right word, and that can be very beneficial to you. And it is challenging, so you get closer and closer, and then you finally get a mental reward.”
Gonzalez started playing the game at the end of December and since then has introduced it to some of his classes.
“I introduced the game to some of my students, as a short two-minute activity at the start of class,” Gonzalez said.
That short time limit is part of what makes the game so enjoyable. It doesn’t take long to play and once you’re done, you’re done.
“It is definitely not time-consuming, you play it once a day and it’s done,” Gonzalez said.
Overall, Wordle is a very simple though addicting game that can be a competition between family and friends or just a simple stress-relieving activity.
With the sale to the NY Times, however, some worry that the game will soon be hidden behind a paywall. Currently, the NY Times offers a number of similar puzzles with their paid subscription, and fans of Wordle fear that the game may soon be integrated into that subscription service. For now, Wordle is still available for free and gaining popularity d_il_.
