by Aditya Luthra, BBA(FIA)’24

A seemingly random assortment of grey, yellow and green boxes dominating feeds, popped up around the end of 2021. Even if you had already made some efforts to satiate your curiosity, I guarantee you must’ve been caught off guard visualizing the popularity these aforementioned boxes actually possess. You too must be thinking to yourself, “Why are these tri-coloured, 30-odd squares literally the talk of the whole world these days?”

Try to picture it in your head as you read along. It’s October 2021. Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn-based software engineer, decides to create a word game for his partner, Palak Shah. He names it “WORDLE” – An amalgamation of his last name and the word, “Word”. The rules are fairly simple – The player has six opportunities to guess a five-letter word. For each guess, the correct letters, wrong letters and the correct but misplaced letters are highlighted in green, grey and yellow respectively. The objective is to use these cues to guess the answer in as few tries as possible. His wife absolutely loves it, and shares it with others. Nothing fancy or out of the blue thus far.

Now picture this. About a dozen or so people were playing this game in early-November 2021. Come January 1st 2022, and the game’s player count stood at about 3,00,000. Crazy right? In case you already haven’t guessed it, remember those squares I talked about earlier? Yep, that’s exactly what “Wordle” is. But the question now is, what exactly clicked?

A LOT of things. The beauty of this game lies in its simplicity first and foremost. You don’t necessarily have to be smart to play this game, but winning this game actually makes you feel like you’re the smartest person ever. The premise is simple, perfect for us impatient millennials. Anyone with even a basic grasp of English can learn to play it within seconds of actually trying it. Therefore, people who don’t have English as their primary language, and old people who aren’t that well-versed with technology, can play it too. The number of times it can be played is ingeniously limited to 1 per day, so anyone playing it doesn’t overindulge and get bored with it straightaway. This weirdly makes it more addictive. After your first ever game, your natural inclination is to want to play again, but Wordle only posts a new word every 24 hours.

Then there’s also the brilliant community aspect of the game. Every person gets the same word, making it possible for you to directly compare yourself with others. Got it on the second try? You’re probably 1 of only 10-15 people in the world to do so. Players can engage in a low-stakes but super interesting competition which is surprisingly, very rewarding. People can share their results over social media too, completely spoiler-free. All you see is the matrix of those tri-coloured squares, and not the actual word itself. The game is completely ad-free and platform neutral, which further lends to its popularity.

The mainstream impact of this game has been quite huge too. As soon as the game surfaced, a bunch of clones popped all over the Apple App store. These counterfeit apps tried to cash in on the hype and were even fairly successful in their mission. However, in an unprecedented move, Apple personally nuked all the copycats, despite the fact that the original game never existed as an app on the App Store. This action gave the game its first wave of headlines. 

Celebrities are obsessed with it too. Talk show host Jimmy Fallon played it on-air in his show, “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” which is watched by millions. He even shares his daily Wordle attempts on his Twitter account. The rise has been so meteoric that American newspaper ‘The New York Times’ recently bought the game in a 7-figure deal. 

The rise of this game is as surprising to its creator, Mr. Wardle, as it is to us. No stranger to internet fame, having already created a couple of games which enjoy the tag of being Reddit cult-classics in “The Button” and “Place”, he never expected this particular game to go viral. “I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun. It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.” he said in an interview. 

The eye-popping success of Wordle has subsequently birthed many clones, Nerdle, Absurdle, Dordle (players have to guess not 1, but 2 words simultaneously), Quordle (guessing count is further bumped up to 4), Lewdle (Yes, it is what you think it is) and Squabble (funnily enough, a battle royale game) just to name a few. It really is a testament to the immense mainstream appeal Wordle has garnered over the past half year, that it has been copied so many times, in so many different ways.

The success of Wordle really does prove the old adage that, “Less is more.” No fancy graphics, no monetization by the creator, no bragging about downloads and no millions of dollars raised for expansion, Wordle is exactly what Josh Wardle says it is – Just a game that’s fun. 

“I warm up with the spelling bee each morning. Just to get my mind right for it (Wordle).” Ms. Shah says. I think it’s safe to say that Wordle is now part of her daily routine.

Mine too, Ms. Shah, mine too.