Having The Last Word With Wordle

Hi, I'm Rick Barron, your host, and welcome to That's Life, I Swear

Not sure what you do in the morning, but for me I have my coffee along with my iPhone, and start the day by plugging five-letter words into a grid, waiting for green, gray and yellow boxes to pop up. I know I'm not alone here. I'm talking about Wordle, the free viral word game that has millions of us hooked.

We know the game but do you know the story on how the game came about?

Let's jump into this 

Back in October of 2021, the world, was beginning to see an end to the COVID Pandemic. 

During that same month, Josh Wardle a software engineer in Brooklyn, knew his girlfriend loved word puzzle games. As a nation and the world, we were still dealing with being locked up at home due to the pandemic. To help deal with this confinement, Josh utilized his time by creating a guessing game for just the two of them to help pass the time. As a play on his last name, he named it Wordle.

After Josh and his girlfriend played the game for a few months, something came to mind. Was he on to something? He had to find out.

He thought of seeing if there might be others interested in this guessing game. Josh soon introduced the game to his family, who became obsessed, and then eventually he shared it with his relatives.

There’s that saying, word of mouth moves at lighting speed.

It didn't take long for Wordle to get traction with the public. After launching in October of 2021, data reflected that approximately 90 people played the game the first day of its launch. By the end of January of 2022, over 300,000 people were playing the game. Josh smiled at that data point and thought, maybe there was something to his guessing game.

Leave it to social media channels to start spreading the word even faster about this new game. The biggest social media source contributing to Wordle going viral, was Twitter in late December of 2021. In February of 2022, the number of players went through the roof, hitting over 3 million players! 

Yes, Josh, I think you have something here. It was a serendipity moment.

Seeing the game's rapid and unexpected success knocked Josh over. He was overwhelmed that something he had created for his girlfriend was now widely embraced around the world. Isn't that the way these things always happens? 

Now I should call out that this wasn’t Josh's first rodeo with creating puzzles. While working as a software engineer at Reddit, he used his technical skills to create two collaborative projects and social experiments on the site, called The Button and Place. Each was a phenomenon in their moment. You can find links to these two projects by going to my website.

Wordle was built without a team of engineers. It was just Josh and his girlfriend, Palak Shah, who were the creators. Mind you all this while trying to kill time during the COVID pandemic. 

They say timing is everything and Josh may in part have benefitted from the COVID shutdown. I mean here's a game you can play once daily that only takes a few minutes. Think of it as a welcome break from working from home and dealing with the pandemic's dark, dreary days. I think in part, the draw of Josh’s game gave people what they were so desperately missing while being confined within their homes, human companionship. 

Wordle provided an opportunity to connect with family and friends over in-person games during the pandemic, and Josh’s game brought some unity.

While researching Wordle, I did find an interesting tidbit about Josh’s game.  He actually had created the idea back in 2013, but the project lay dormant until the lockdown. Another historical gem was that Josh and his girlfriend played the first game on June 19, 2021. The first word used to give the program it's bench test; CIGAR. Quite appropriate I would say.

Palak played a huge role in helping Josh with the creation of Wordle. She not only helped with refinement of its creation and getting the game ready for prime time, she sorted approximately 12,000 obscure five-letter words, which would've been near impossible to guess. She eventually cut the list down to about 2,500 five-letter words. Talk about patience and perseverance! 

So how do you play this game? The rules are simple but I must confess, a little exasperating in that you get only one shot to play six attempts to solve the puzzle. Perhaps it's just me, but I’m guessing others feel somewhat the same way. Ok the rules:

·       You can only play one puzzle a day and must guess the five-letter word in six attempts or less. Should you not solve the puzzle you have to wait almost 24 hours to play again

·       Everyone plays the same puzzle

·       Answers are never plurals

·       A correct letter turns green

·       A correct letter in the wrong place turns yellow

·       An incorrect letter turns gray

·       Letters can be used more than once

While creating the game, Josh said he wanted the game to be straightforward and, at the same time, intriguing enough to keep the user coming back and keep playing. Then it hit him. While you have six attempts to solve the puzzle, coming back immediately to play another round wasn't allowed. 

No, you must wait until the next day to play another round. This is the part I hate but can see why it adds to the intrigue to come back.

It was the sense of knowing you could solve the next puzzle, but being limited to only one game per day hooked the user to come back.

I love the simplicity of the game. You spend two to three minutes trying to solve the word of the day. After six attempts, that's it. If you miss getting the answer, you at least get to see what the word was at the end. 

Back in December of 2021, Josh noticed users sharing their results by typing out a grid of green, yellow and black emojis, so he built an automated way for players to brag about their successes in a spoiler-free way. 

Josh came up with a clever way to help those who wanted to share their attempts to successes. His idea helped contribute with Wordle going viral, and that was sharing one's success is encouraged on social media. Yes, let the 'Like’ buttons take off. Josh’s idea was when you do click the share button, you get a grid of yellow and green squares representing the path you took. Don’t worry, the actual letters are never revealed so as not giving away the word. 

Now, here’s something to bear in mind. For me, I found out the hard way. Solving the word of the day on Wordle is the challenge, but it’s the number of wins. Wordle keeps track of the number of games you've played and the number of successive victories you've had; thus, what’s known as your ‘streak’.  

That said, understand that your streak goes away if you miss a game. Additionally, your streak is tracked on only one device. So, if you play the game on your mobile phone in the morning, but then switch over to your laptop in the afternoon, the streak you built up on your mobile phone will be reset while your laptop starts at 1. Technology, what can I say.

Like everything else, I knew that someone would eventually buy Wordle. The game was becoming so popular around the world, the temptation was too great to let it stand alone. In late January of 2022, the popular puzzle game was purchased by The New York Times Company. The game was acquired for an undisclosed price in the “low-seven figures.” 

The New York Times Company says Wordle will be free to play for new and existing players. Of course, here’s a heads up, it will be free for the time being. To their credit The New York Times made no changes to the game's rules. Guess we can assume that’s also for the time being.

The New York Times has added a tool for Wordle. It’s called WordleBot, and it's pretty cool. What the bot does is analyze every game you play. It provides tips for what you could have done differently and how your game compared to the average. To access it go to the NYT's The Upshot site. Oh, by the way it's no longer available for free. You'll need an NYT or NYT Games subscription to get through the paywall. 

What can we learn from this story? What’s the take away

So, where does one go to play the game? You can play Wordle on the New York Times Games site. Don’t waste your time looking for a Wordle app, because there are none to be had. If you do find an app, and you will, it’s not the genuine game. 

Now remember, Wordle can only be played once a day. The game resets at midnight each day. That said, I’m sure there are those of you who are itching to wait till midnight to play, while your family has already gone to bed. I confess, I’ve done this.

We can learn from this story that one individual’s dream was introduced to the world at the right time. Its simplicity was the key to its success. What separates Wordle from other online games: There's only one word to solve each day. Also making it attractive: no advertisements or menus.

The creator said he's glad Wordle helped friends and family find a way to stay connected in the worst of times during the pandemic.

Some take aways are by playing Wordle you help enhance your cognitive skills as you age. It’s a manner of challenge and learning while simultaneously exercising your brain. Of course, you want to stay as mentally active as much as you can. With Wordle, it’s a simple 2-3 minute game and the interface is easy to navigate.

What also makes Wordle interesting is that users enjoy the scarcity. There's only one word per day, meaning users only play the game for a few minutes. However, it also gives them something new to look forward each day.

Ok, tomorrow I’ll try p-h-o-n-e or maybe b-o-a-r-d.

Well, there you go. That's life, I swear.

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website, that you can find on either Apple Podcasts/iTunes or Google Podcasts, for show notes calling out key pieces of content mentioned and the episode transcript.

As always, I thank you for listening. 

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