Wordle Is a Love Story

Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, knew his partner loved word games, so he created a guessing game for just the two of them. As a play on his last name, he named it Wordle. But after the couple played for months, and after it rapidly became an obsession in his family's WhatsApp group once he introduced it to relatives, Mr. Wardle thought he might be on to something and released it to the rest of the world in October. From a report: On Nov. 1, 90 people played. On Sunday, just over two months later, more than 300,000 people played. It's been a meteoric rise for the once-a-day game, which invites players to guess a five-letter word in a similar manner as the guess-the-color game Mastermind. After guessing a five-letter word, the game tells you whether any of your letters are in the secret word and whether they are in the correct place. You have six tries to get it right. Few such popular corners of the internet are as low-frills as the website, which Mr. Wardle built himself as a side project. There are no ads or flashing banners; no windows pop up or ask for money. There is merely the game on a black background.

"I think people kind of appreciate that there's this thing online that's just fun," Mr. Wardle said in an interview on Monday. "It's not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It's just a game that's fun." This is not Mr. Wardle's first brush with suddenly capturing widespread attention. Formerly a software engineer for Reddit, he created two collaborative social experiments on the site, called The Button and Place, that each were phenomena in their moment. But Wordle was built without a team of engineers. It was just him and his partner, Palak Shah, killing time during a pandemic. Mr. Wardle said he first created a similar prototype in 2013, but his friends were unimpressed and he scrapped the idea. In 2020, he and Ms. Shah "got really into" the New York Times Spelling Bee and the daily crossword, "so I wanted to come up with a game that she would enjoy," he said. The breakthrough, he said, was limiting players to one game per day. That enforced a sense of scarcity, which he said was partially inspired by the Spelling Bee, which leaves people wanting more, he said.

Creativity no longer exists

[zanthraxnl]

This game is very similar to a Dutch TV show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[MtHuurne]

I played that with a friend by passing notes in class back in the early 90's.

It's not unusual though for things to get discovered more than once; it's likely that Mr. Wardle didn't know Lingo and just thought "could you do Mastermind with words?"

Re:Creativity no longer exists

[cob666]

Not only did he NOT create this game, but the company that sold the original Master Mind actually sold a version called Word Master Mind. A friend of mine had this when we were kids.

Word Master Mind [youtube.com]

Re:

[cob666]

Wardle may not have been the first to come up with the concept, but do we know if he saw Lingo or knew of Word Master Mind before sharing his creation with friends and family? Granted, if he were to try and copyright or patent, he would need to do due diligence to find prior art.

I'm in complete agreement with you on this.

Name not Original Either

[Roger W Moore]

When I got the first iPod touch many years ago I got an app called Wordle [phonesreview.co.uk] so it is not even the first "Wordle" app and it seems that there is another app Wordle! [apple.com] as well since then. So perhaps this one should be "Wordle!!"?

Re:

[HannahBarbarian]

When I got the first iPod touch many years ago I got an app called Wordle [phonesreview.co.uk] so it is not even the first "Wordle" app and it seems that there is another app Wordle! [apple.com] as well since then. So perhaps this one should be "Wordle!!"?

I know, right? I was just thinking that the rest of the world had also discovered the game Wordle [steampowered.com] on Steam, but it is another, completely different game.

I guess naming your word game a variation of "Word" is a pretty common convention.

Lingo US TV Game show 1987

[Dan East]

Lingo was a TV gameshow in the US that aired from 1987 through 2011, and it was this exact game. Two teams took turn guessing a word, and the correctly placed letters were indicated, as well as the letters that were in the word but in the incorrect position.

Bonus trivia: The original game was powered by a Commodore Amiga.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

One per day?

[nospam007]

For people unable to delete some cookies?

Re:One per day?

[andi75]

> For people unable to delete some cookies?

Have fun guessing the same word over and over...

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[ti-coune]

indeed, just moved from Brave to Chrome and it was the same word, although it took me more guesses to figure this out this time LOL

Re:

[ti-coune]

I'm not that sure it works on cookies In Brave somehow it still recognizes me, although cookie should be deleted when i close the tab If I go agressive on Brave settings for that site, site does not load, I could play another game under Chrome maybe it used IP address ?

Re:

[nospam007]

"I'm not that sure it works on cookies "

It doesn't.

" maybe it used IP address ?"

No, I switched countries with my VPN, it's just a site that shows 1 word per day, but there are already generators around to make them yourself.

The WoF Problem

[jlf278]

It seems like you should be able to win most of the time by guessing three words with distinct letters before you even put any thought into it. For example, start by guessing "lathe," "drops," and "cumin." That covers the 15 most commonly used letters. It makes sense that the best strategy would be similar to what happened with the bonus round in Wheel of Fortune, where eventually contestants would start off with RSTLNE, so eventually they gave the most common letters away for free rather than repeat the formality each episode. Unfortunately, this takes some of the fun out of it, but since you start with no information each game of Wordle, it would make sense to always start with the same 5-letter guess at least. Perhaps the game could be improved by starting with at least one piece of information - off the top of my head, I'd suggest showing 5 letters that aren't in the solution and giving one less guess.

Past can inform Present

[SuperKendall]

it would make sense to always start with the same 5-letter guess at least.

After thinking about this for a bit, it seems like maybe that is not quite the best approach - you can in essence do something akin to card counting, where your first guess for today tries to use as few letters as possible from words used in at least the last few previous days...

What I was surprised at is that it always seems to be five letters, I thought it would vary word length and maximum guess count. But then I've only been pl

Re:

[ffejie]

I thought STERN would be the best word to start with, because you can cover RST N E -- just missing the L.

Re:

[phantomfive]

For example, start by guessing "lathe," "drops," and "cumin." That covers the 15 most commonly used letters.

What if the word doesn't have any of those letters?

Re:

[kallisti]

What word doesn't have any of those letters? The only vowel left is "y"
A quick search through an online dictionary found no 5 letter words that didn't have one of these.

Re:

[phantomfive]

If you get a letter on the first word, then the optimal word for the next guess changes.

Re:

[spitzak]

There is a "hard" option that means all your guesses have to include/exclude the letters determined by previous guesses, which I think would help a lot in preventing this strategy.

It's not trying to do anything shady

[ickleberry]

Lots of things started off not doing anything shady, then they proved the concept, refined it, next thing along comes some superduper Global megaconglomerate with a big wad of cash. The creator decides he wouldn't mind spending the rest of his days on a branded beach towel in Barbados, the company is acquired for some number of millions/billions and before you know it they are infact doing something shady with your eyeballs and data. Its a shame it has to be this way.

Re:

[mustafap]

>Its a shame it has to be this way.

I bet the person on the beach doesn't think that :)

Waking up to a Slashvertisement

[93 Escort Wagon]

Will there be a Milton-Bradley sponsored story later in the day?

Re:

[flink]

It's a free browser-based game that doesn't even have any advertising on the site. It can hardly be an ad if this guy isn't selling anything. It's just a fun little story about a guy who made a video game and shared it. No need to be bitter about it.

Google rediscovered

[AcidFnTonic]

So it's google all over again. A basic site with no flashing crap with just a search bar...

Sigh, at least it used to be that.

This is just an ad

[clambake]

isn't it? Bah.

Not very original

[Traf-O-Data-Hater]

Watched it being played. Meh. It seems to be a cross between Mastermind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)/ [wikipedia.org] and single-player Scrabble.

Romance or business?

[sabbede]

I'm sorry, are Mr. Wardle and Ms. Shah in business together? Are they cops who watch each other's backs? Or are they in a romantic relationship? That is, are they partners or are they boyfriend and girlfriend?

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[ThomasCummings]

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