Wordle Gives Game Making Programmers a Shot in the Arm

Do you play Wordle? It's really quite an amazing phenomenon.

Here's what my Wordle for Tuesday,
March 8, looked like.

If you already play, then you know what it is. It's an online word game in which you try to guess the word of the day within six tries. With each guess, you can learn something. A letter tile will be grey when it is not in the word, orange when it is in the word but not the right location, and green when it appears in its correct spot.

Most game makers try to create games so addictive that you can't stop playing them. Wordle is indeed addictive, but different. You can only play once a day. And it probably drives some Wordle players crazy to have to wait till the next time they can play. In fact, the game actually has a little timer that lets you know how long you'll have to wait. To me, that's brilliant.

The creator of the game was a Brit named Josh Wardle. Before creating Wordle he was into New York Times crossword puzzles (and may have worked on some of my daughter's crosswords there) and the Spelling Bee. Evidently he was a programmer and he created a game for he and his partner to play. After perfecting it, they shared it with friends and relatives. In October 2021 the decided, because they saw how much everyone enjoyed it, to make it available to anyone and everyone.

At the beginning of November only 90 people were playing. On January 2, 2022, 300,000 people played Wordle. One week later, two million people were playing. Tow THAT is what "going viral" means.

Official NYTimes logo for Wordle

These things don't go unnoticed. Today the New York Times owns the game, and John Wardle has pocketed a cool nine million dollars.

The web page where it resides is clean and uncluttered, fast loading and responsive. Many players are incentivized by the fact that it requires brain work, but is not impossible. Other players are motivated by competition. For this reason, the “Share” button was a brilliant addition. 

One day in February I guessed the word of the day on the First Guess. Had I understood that I could share my triumph I would have used that Share button. A week or two ago I noticed that someone was on television for solving it in two. 

Actually, solving it in one, or probably two, is pretty much luck. It takes a little more skill to solve it in three, which is a fun target to aim for.

I'm sure that the brushfire speed at which the game spread has incentivized countless other programmers to try their hand at bringing other new games to market. What's the name of the game you're working on?

 

Learn More

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordle

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Here's one I got in two!

Wordle 259 2/6

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