The game starts with five letters, and you have to guess a word. Wordle is one of those phenomena that recalls the dawn of the web, when rather scarce web pages offered hobbies that went viral even without social networks.
What is Wordle?
Wordle is a game designed by a computer engineer and translated by a web designer Colombian. The game that lasts 5 minutes, but is causing addiction to thousands of people, despite its brevity.
Indeed, it is a simple but challenging game. When opening the web page from a smartphone or computer, we see a five-by-six cell table and, below it, a keyboard. The objective is to guess a word following the Mastermind rules.
We write the first word and press Enter. The chosen letters are gray if they are not present in the word to be guessed, yellow if they are present but in the wrong position, green if they are correct and the position is also correct. So, through trial and error, we should arrive at the solution but be careful, we only have six attempts.
Despite, or perhaps precisely because of, extreme simplicity, Wordle has revolutionized the web. Users have gone from 90 on November 1 to 300.000 at the beginning of January.
The social networks that have begun to fill with the results achieved by the different players. After having guessed the word, in fact, we can share our success: a screen offers our statistics and a large "Share" button that leaves no room for doubt.
Wordle's story
Wordle's story also seems to come from the past. The game was created by Josh Wardle, a computer engineer from Brooklyn who wanted to come up with a hobby for himself and his partner, Palak Shah, a word game enthusiast. The first idea was born in 2013 but was immediately shelved because, according to Wardle's friends, it did not work. But then, motivated by the success of another puzzle, Spelling Bee, the engineer decided to relaunch it. The second test worked. Day after day, Wordle thrilled the couple, the two began sharing it on the family's WhatsApp chat and then spread the link to friends. From there the climb.
"I think people like that there's something online that's just fun." "It's just a fun game."
Wardle tells The New York Times
Simplicity is a virtue, some would say, and among the secrets of success there are two interesting factors. The first is the duration of the game, which barely exceeds five minutes, a kind of short break while having a coffee or traveling on public transport. The second is a feeling of scarcity that leads you to check the site every day: Wordle only offers one word every 24 hours.
Over the months, the game mechanics have been refined. The initial list contained 12.000 headings, many of them too obscure for our times, so the couple chose 2.500 common words to challenge themselves and have fun. As the game is only in English, for us Italians it has extra value. Those five minutes a day stimulate you to think in English, enrich your vocabulary and, of course, have fun.
What Wordle was created for
Wordle No. tijan un registeredro de usuAryans. «No lo necesita, No. es una here RAMfeela for obtener informacion de my usuAryans", explica su creador. MONún él, la websites tijan «mace de withio millon de visitas únicas al month", aunwhich No. tijan una herea de comprobarlo.
The palabras which apare cen en Wordle consist of but byactorias, aunwhich it's alreadyjudgment beforeefinidas Wordle and not muisra public insuranceonline ity, caphollow almacena thatos de that usuAryans, ni pretende atrabythe.
«Lo único which pretendo es which el juglove juegue una Partida cada ded. Es un juego de that años veinte, No. de that No.venta o de that firstEros 2000«
Wordle es un encantlove anacronism that has come to stay.
Wordle versions
To date, several versions have been created in various languages of the first one created by Josh Wardle. Here we leave you a link to the Spanish version created by Daniel Rodriguez and another to the Catalan version.
Have fun! and tell us what you think in the comments.
