A new game has been taking over social media for the last few weeks because of its creative challenge and addictive gameplay. The “Wordle” game has become a hit sensation as more and more people discover the game and compete.
Wordle is a relatively newer game created by software engineer Josh Wardle. It is a competitive game where the player has six attempts to guess a singular five-letter word. If the letter is included in the final word, the tile will turn green. If the tile turns yellow, then the word is included in the mystery world, and if the tile turns grey, it is not included in the “wordle.”
Since its release in October of 2021, the game has become a smash-hit sensation shared all over the world. When it was first released, only 90 people were playing it according to the New York Times. Two months later, almost 300,000 people were playing.
Social media users compete against each other in the game, with fans either celebrating that they got the word right or languishing that they got it wrong. The game has been turned into a meme, played by thousands of different people, and was even purchased by the New York Times.
Many different websites theorized that the game became popular because of its simplicity; the simple challenge, the easier way of sharing results, and the fact that it only takes three minutes a day.
“I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun,” Wardle said in an interview with the New York Times. “It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.”
Even Winthrop students and faculty have been addicted to the games.
“At first, the trend was kind of confusing,” Sophomore illustration major Michael Yelton said. “Just seeing all the colored squares on Twitter, but looking into it, I found it’s just a simple little word game. It’s also a fun way to exercise your brain.”
English professor Jo Koster said that the game was intriguing and became hooked after one round.
“Wordle is a simple and fun mental exercise that challenges me to recognize patterns in words,” Koster said. “I like to do it first thing in the morning if I can to kick-start my brain for the day.”
“I think it has become more popular because of viral messaging,” Koster theorized. “Lots of people started talking about it on lots of platforms, and the New York Times and CNN and People magazine started writing about it, which has just accelerated the popularity.”
Wordle is a free-to-play application that you can purchase anywhere you play apps. The word changes every day, so be prepared for any five-letter word to pop up.
“Some days it seems easier than others, and you’ll often see a lot of people posting online on a day when the solution is particularly hard,” Koster said. “It totally depends, of course, on what five-letter word you decide to start with. And some days you just get lucky; this week one of my starting word guesses turned out to be the solution, so I solved it in one pass. That almost never happens. It was fun seeing my friends’ responses.”
