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Wordle
Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by the Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle. In the game, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, receiving feedback through colored tiles that indicate correct letters and their placement. A single puzzle is released daily, with all players attempting to solve the same word. It was inspired by the English game Mastermind.
Originally developed as a personal project for Wardle and his partner, Wordle was publicly released in October 2021. It gained widespread popularity in late 2021 after the introduction of a shareable emoji-based results format, which led to viral discussion on social media. The game's success spurred the creation of numerous clones, adaptations in other languages, and variations with unique twists. It has been well-received, being played 4.8 billion times during 2023.
The New York Times Company acquired Wordle in January 2022 for a "low seven-figure sum". The game remained free but underwent changes, including the removal of offensive or politically sensitive words and the introduction of account logins to track stats. Wordle was later added to the New York Times Crossword app (later The New York Times Games) and accompanied by WordleBot, which gave players analysis on their gameplay. In November 2022, Tracy Bennett became the game's first editor, refining word selection.
Every day, a new five-letter word is chosen, and players attempt to guess it within six tries. After each guess, the letters are color-coded to indicate their accuracy: green means the letter is correct and in the right position, yellow means it is in the word but in the wrong position, and gray means it is not in the word at all. If a guessed word contains multiple instances of the same letter—such as the "o"s in "robot"—those letters will be marked green or yellow only if the answer also contains them multiple times; otherwise, extra occurrences will be marked gray.
Each day's answer is drawn from a curated list of 2,309 words. Wordle follows American spelling conventions, and it has a "hard mode" option, which requires players to use any revealed green or yellow letters in subsequent guesses. The daily word is the same for all players worldwide. Additionally, the game offers both a dark theme and a high-contrast mode for colorblind accessibility, replacing the standard green and yellow color scheme with orange and blue.
Conceptually and stylistically, the game is similar to the 1955 pen-and-paper game Jotto and the game show franchise Lingo. The gameplay is also similar to the two-player Word Mastermind variety of the board game Mastermind —and the game "Bulls and cows", with the exception that Wordle confirms the specific letters that are correct. According to data collected by The New York Times, the most common first guesses are "adieu", "audio", "stare", "raise", and "arise". However, it was found that starting words such as "adieu" and "audio" may put people at a disadvantage as it takes more attempts for people to solve than if they start with words such as "slate", "crane", and "trace". Computer algorithms can consistently solve the puzzle within five of the six allowed guesses.
In 2013, Josh Wardle created an early prototype of Wordle, initially calling it Mr. Bugs' Wordy Nugz. Inspired by the color-matching mechanics of the board game, Mastermind, the prototype allowed players to solve puzzles consecutively. Originally, the game included all 13,000 five-letter words in the English language, but Wardle found that his partner, Palak Shah, struggled with many obscure words; this made guessing feel as random as it did in Mastermind. To improve the experience, he had Shah filter the list, reducing it to about 2,000 more familiar words—enough to last roughly five years at one puzzle per day. She categorized words into those she knew, those she didn't, and those she might have known. By 2014, Wardle had completed the prototype but eventually lost interest and set it aside.
In the years that followed, Wardle created the online social experiments The Button and Place while working for Reddit. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, he and his partner "got really into" The New York Times's Spelling Bee and daily crossword puzzle. This reignited his interest in Wordle, and he drew inspiration from Spelling Bee's minimalist web design and its one-puzzle-per-day format. By January 2021, Wardle had published Wordle on the web, shared only with himself and his partner. He named it Wordle as a pun on his surname.
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Wordle
Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by the Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle. In the game, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, receiving feedback through colored tiles that indicate correct letters and their placement. A single puzzle is released daily, with all players attempting to solve the same word. It was inspired by the English game Mastermind.
Originally developed as a personal project for Wardle and his partner, Wordle was publicly released in October 2021. It gained widespread popularity in late 2021 after the introduction of a shareable emoji-based results format, which led to viral discussion on social media. The game's success spurred the creation of numerous clones, adaptations in other languages, and variations with unique twists. It has been well-received, being played 4.8 billion times during 2023.
The New York Times Company acquired Wordle in January 2022 for a "low seven-figure sum". The game remained free but underwent changes, including the removal of offensive or politically sensitive words and the introduction of account logins to track stats. Wordle was later added to the New York Times Crossword app (later The New York Times Games) and accompanied by WordleBot, which gave players analysis on their gameplay. In November 2022, Tracy Bennett became the game's first editor, refining word selection.
Every day, a new five-letter word is chosen, and players attempt to guess it within six tries. After each guess, the letters are color-coded to indicate their accuracy: green means the letter is correct and in the right position, yellow means it is in the word but in the wrong position, and gray means it is not in the word at all. If a guessed word contains multiple instances of the same letter—such as the "o"s in "robot"—those letters will be marked green or yellow only if the answer also contains them multiple times; otherwise, extra occurrences will be marked gray.
Each day's answer is drawn from a curated list of 2,309 words. Wordle follows American spelling conventions, and it has a "hard mode" option, which requires players to use any revealed green or yellow letters in subsequent guesses. The daily word is the same for all players worldwide. Additionally, the game offers both a dark theme and a high-contrast mode for colorblind accessibility, replacing the standard green and yellow color scheme with orange and blue.
Conceptually and stylistically, the game is similar to the 1955 pen-and-paper game Jotto and the game show franchise Lingo. The gameplay is also similar to the two-player Word Mastermind variety of the board game Mastermind —and the game "Bulls and cows", with the exception that Wordle confirms the specific letters that are correct. According to data collected by The New York Times, the most common first guesses are "adieu", "audio", "stare", "raise", and "arise". However, it was found that starting words such as "adieu" and "audio" may put people at a disadvantage as it takes more attempts for people to solve than if they start with words such as "slate", "crane", and "trace". Computer algorithms can consistently solve the puzzle within five of the six allowed guesses.
In 2013, Josh Wardle created an early prototype of Wordle, initially calling it Mr. Bugs' Wordy Nugz. Inspired by the color-matching mechanics of the board game, Mastermind, the prototype allowed players to solve puzzles consecutively. Originally, the game included all 13,000 five-letter words in the English language, but Wardle found that his partner, Palak Shah, struggled with many obscure words; this made guessing feel as random as it did in Mastermind. To improve the experience, he had Shah filter the list, reducing it to about 2,000 more familiar words—enough to last roughly five years at one puzzle per day. She categorized words into those she knew, those she didn't, and those she might have known. By 2014, Wardle had completed the prototype but eventually lost interest and set it aside.
In the years that followed, Wardle created the online social experiments The Button and Place while working for Reddit. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, he and his partner "got really into" The New York Times's Spelling Bee and daily crossword puzzle. This reignited his interest in Wordle, and he drew inspiration from Spelling Bee's minimalist web design and its one-puzzle-per-day format. By January 2021, Wardle had published Wordle on the web, shared only with himself and his partner. He named it Wordle as a pun on his surname.