About

Wordle is an online-based word game similar to the television game show Lingo that became prominent online in December 2021. The game gives players six guesses to identify a five-letter word. After each guess, the game will show the player which letters in the word they guessed are not in the solution, which letters are in the solution but in the wrong spot and which letters are in the solution in the correct spot. These are represented by black, yellow and green tiles, respectively. In December 2021, Wordle implemented a feature that allows players to share to Twitter their score along with the grid that represents their success in the puzzle. This helped the game grow to hundreds of thousands of players in a short amount of time. Oversaturation of these tweets inspired other users to make "Not Wordles," being emoji compositions unrelated to the game.

History

Wordle, hosted on powerlanguage.co.uk,^[3] was created by developer Josh Wardle^[1] for his partner, Palak Shah. The game was initially released publically in mid-October 2021 after Wardle found family members enjoyed the game (typical Wordle solution shown below, left). In December, after Wardle saw that players were sharing their scores online via the use of emoji to represent their final grid, he implemented a feature that allowed players to share their grid on Twitter (typical solution post^[2] shown below, right).

Sale To New York Times

On January 31st, 2022, The New York Times and Josh Wardle announced that The New York Times had purchased Wordle for a "low seven-figure sum." This led to despair from many players who enjoyed Wordle as an independent project and feared its sale to a media conglomerate could lead to it being put behind a paywall. However, many conceded they were happy for Wardle for cashing in on his game's success.

Online Presence

Once the feature allowing users to share their grids was added to the game, the game was popularized on social media. On January 3rd, 2022, the New York Times^[1] reported that the game had grown from 90 to over 300,000 players in the span of just two months. The game also received a significant amount of press attention, as media outlets including The Ringer,^[4] Slate^[5] and PC Gamer,^[6] among many others, covered it.

Parodies of Wordle soon appeared alongside scores on Twitter. For example, user @egypturnash^[7] posted an Emoji Sheriff parodying Wordle, gaining over 1,600 retweets and 9,200 likes (shown below, left). User @rajat_suresh^[8] posted a parody on January 7th, 2022, gaining over 70 retweets and 1,500 likes (shown below, right).

Related Memes

Not Wordle

Not Wordle refers to a trend started on Twitter in late 2021 in reaction to the oversaturation of Wordle emoji tweets (ones that use green, grey white and yellow square emojis, shared by Wordle players). Twitter users started to tweet "Not Wordles," being emoji compositions unrelated to the game. The first to do so was Twitter^[9] user modernmodron, who posted a tweet on December 27th, 2021, that earned 24 likes in one month (shown below).

Search Interest

External References