Small green and yellow squares can be seen all over devices at Pace as students work hard to figure out the daily Wordle. A new game emerging in January and increasing in popularity ever since, Wordle is a quick daily puzzle where the player has to guess the five-letter word of the day by guessing their own series of words based on the feedback they have received from the previous one. This feedback comes in highlighting certain squares in yellow or green, showing if the letter is correct or in the correct spot as well, respectively. Though it does not take much time to complete, the Wordle gives its players a quick challenge every day. Sophomore Dhru Lalaji said “I think the Wordle challenges your brain everyday, and it’s a good way for everyone to progressively learn words that they possibly didn’t know before.”
The Wordle challenge was started by software engineer Josh Wardle, making a challenge for his family and even naming it with a pun from his own last name. He initially meant for it to be a private game, but soon saw the popularity among his family and decided to expand it. In December 2021, when it first came to the public, the Wordle had only 90 daily players on the website. However, since then, the game has increased exponentially in daily users and now millions of people visit the site every day to play the game. On Jan. 31, 2022, The New York Times bought the Wordle to add to their variety of games on their website. While the exact price was not announced, The New York Times said that they spent an amount of money “in the seven figures” to acquire the game. They hope to attract more customers to their online section by buying the trendy game, and thought that acquiring a commonly used game would help with this.
The Wordle also has some variants that have been invented since the original game gained its popularity. Games like the Quordle, where the player has to solve four wordless at once, and the Wordle two, where the word is six letters instead of five, have risen to similar amounts of daily players who want more than the one word they get every day. “I like playing the Quordle because the Wordle is already a challenge and it compounds that challenge,” said English teacher Michelle Yancich. Another fun variation to the game is the Harry Styles and Taylor Swift wordle, where fans can guess words related to their favorite celebrities.
One of the trickiest parts of the Wordle is deciding what word to begin with, and everyone has their own opinion of strategy. “I use the word crane to start because it has so many common letters in it,” said sophomore Matthew Wells. On the other hand, freshman Zachary Segall said “I use the word adieu because I like to start by knowing which vowels are in the word.” However, the real strategy is during the game when moving between words, and trying to figure it out in as few as possible.