The New York Times Games section has many options, from the famous Connections and Strands to the most played Wordle game. Here is everything you need to know about Wordle, including how-to play tips, sources for the hints and more.
What is Wordle and how do you play it?
Wordle is an online word puzzle game where players must guess a five-letter word within six attempts. The letters are color-coded after each guess—green for correct letters in the right position, yellow for correct letters in the wrong position, and gray for incorrect letters. For example, if the word is “apple” and you guess “angle,” the letter “a” will be green, “l” will be yellow, and the other letters gray.
It is a kind of free-to-play sweepstakes option that kills your time smartly.
How did it start?
During the pandemic, Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Wales, created Wordle along with his partner Palak Shah. Their original creation was known as Mr. Bugs’ Wordy Nugz. Their first prototype was ready to be experimented with by 2014.
However, life got in the way and their word game idea was set aside to collect dust for several years. When the pandemic hit and the planet went into temporary shutdown, Wardle and Shah amused themselves by working on the New York Times crossword puzzle and spelling bee.
One day, the light bulb went on and they recalled their experimental word game. They busied themselves with modifying the design, releasing it to the public in January of 2021. At first, it was mostly Wardle and Shah distributing the game among friends and followers on social media. By mid-October of 2021, the Wordle website was going viral and the game’s popularity began growing exponentially.
In 2023, Wordle was played 4.8 billion times during the calendar year.
How To Play Wordle
Each day, one five-letter word is put forth for that day’s Wordle answer. It comes from among a list of 2,309 five-letter words that are commonplace in the English language. You start out with 30 empty squares and are provided six guesses to come up with the correct answer.
The game either ends with you correctly solving the puzzle and coming up with that day’s Wordle, or you go down in failure if you are zero-for-six on your attempts and you lose the game. At that point, the day’s word will be revealed to you.
Following each attempt, the letters of your guess will be highlighted in one of three colors – green, yellow, or gray. A green letter means it is in the correct position to spell the word. Yellow-colored letters indicate that the letter is in the word, but is currently located in the wrong position. A gray background is showing you that this letter is not part of the word at all.
The Wordle game board can even be changed to a high contrast theme that incorporates different contrasts in each of these colors to enable those who are colorblind to play the game. In this instance, the green color becomes blue and the yellow becomes orange.
It was Wardle’s decision to limit game play to one word a day. There were a number of reasons behind this choice. Firstly, with just 2,309 available words, it gives the game about five years of daily play before a word will need to be repeated. He also felt it was important that the game not take hours to play. And by limiting play to one word a day, the opportunity to binge on Wordle and become overwhelmingly obsessed with playing the game isn’t accessible.
Wardle discovered that players in New Zealand were incorporating an emoji style of displaying how many guesses they required to complete their Wordle mission. This they would then share with friends to boast of their success. Wardle opted to incorporate this emoji option into game play. Today, it’s become commonplace for people to post their daily Wordle activity on their social media accounts. There’s even been suggestions that winning at Wordle isn’t nearly as important as the sharing of outcomes is, because it’s enabling unique growth in friendships among those bonding over their Wordle play.
However, to non-Wordle players, this form of bragging has become as equally annoying as listening to your friend tell you how well his fantasy football team performed in that weekend’s NFL games.
Can a letter appear more than once in Wordle?
Yes, the same letter can appear more than once in a Wordle word. For example, the word “noose” contains two “o”s. Don’t rule out repeating letters in your guesses!
Are Wordle words spelled in American English or British English?
Wordle uses American English spellings, which means words like “color” (not “colour”) and “honor” (not “honour”) will be used. It’s important to keep this in mind when guessing!
Wordle Game History
The original concept behind Wordle was quite simplistic. Wardle only wanted to create a word game that he and his partner could play. Their objective was never world dominance of the word game empire.
Wardle actually first began experimenting with the game idea as far back as 2013. He was inspired by the color-matching game Mastermind, which also includes a word-based edition called Word: Mastermind. The game has also been paralleled to the 1950s board game Jotto, as well as the popular TV game show franchise Lingo.
The original prototype of Wordle was certainly much less refined than the present version. You were able to play puzzles consecutively and the world list was entirely unfiltered. It included as options more than 13,000 five-letter words present in the English language. But with so many words in play, it made the game too difficult to play. Wardle and Shah felt it would be better to condense their word list to the most commonly-used five-letter words.
After creating the Wordle website and releasing the game into the public realm in early 2021, it was slow to gain a following. As late as November of 2021, the Wordle website boasted of 90 regular players. In early January of 2022, that number had grown to 300,000 players.
Later that same month, Wardle and Shah would sell Wordle to the New York Times for an undisclosed sum, believed to be in the seven-figure range. According to a statement from the New York Times, Wordle has brought tens of millions of players to the New York Times games site. The New York Times even created a Wordle bot, which assesses a player’s game performance and gives them a rating based on both luck and skill.
And yes, of course the name of the game is a play on Wardle’s surname.
Best Strategies For Playing Wordle
Wordle strategy tends to vary from player to player. Some think it best to start out every day by inputting the same first word. The basis for this line of thinking is that it gives you a baseline starting point to begin working toward solving today’s word.
Others believe that mixing it up is the best Wordle strategy. Trying something new and fresh every day in pursuit of a Wordle solution is the path they choose to follow.
Another method could be called the Wheel of Fortune strategy. These players opt to begin their Wordle game by inputting a word that is loaded with vowels. Popular plays with this strategy include adieu, audio, or canoe. The thinking with this strategy is that while in Wheel of Fortune you have to buy vowels, by going with a number of vowels right off the bat, you might be buying your way to a quicker solution.
Others think that because Wordle is built around the process of elimination, going with completely different words for your first two guesses can be a sound strategy.
Here’s another popular strategy – put aside the technology and grab a pad of paper and a pen. Write out as many five-letter words as you can think of, and if you’ve already got some of the letters figured out, that can narrow down your search even more.
Wordle Hints
It’s vital to remember that all spellings of words when playing Wordle are the American version of the word. So it’s flavor instead of flavour, for example. This is important to know when guessing at a word.
Also, remember that the same letter can appear more than once in the same Wordle puzzle. For instance, buggy is a five-letter word that includes the letter G twice. So just because one letter has gone green for you, that doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be another. And they often come one after another, so don’t be afraid to experiment by adding the same letter right after a correct version of that letter is indicated.It’s also allowable – although Wordle purists view it as a form of cheating – to make use of any online five-letter word databases such as Best Word List to help you solve the puzzle. Go ahead and look it up – we won’t tell anyone.
Top Sources for Hints:
- New York Times Games: As the official host of Wordle, NYT frequently updates and provides tips on their gaming section.
- Best Word List: A database of five-letter words, often used for solving Wordle puzzles.
- Reddit Wordle Communities: A rich source of player-shared strategies and daily discussions on the best methods to play Wordle.
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