What Is Wordle, The Latest Internet Game Craze? 5 Things To Know

ACROSS AMERICA — Wordle is so new that cell phone autocorrect systems change it to “wordless,” which isn’t half bad, given the new online word game frustrates people as much as it rewards them.

For those who don’t understand the series of green, yellow and gray boxes on their social media feeds, Wordle is something of a hybrid between the long-running TV game show “Wheel of Fortune,” the popular board game Scrabble, and Sudoku — the Japanese game based on the logical placement of numbers.

And for the record, the game Wordle doesn't have anything to do with the actual word "wordle," which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as "any of several pivoted pieces forming the throat of an adjustable die used in drawing wire or lead pipe."

All you need to play Wordle is an internet connection. It’s free and doesn’t require an app, and the Wordle website is delightfully uncluttered by pop-ups, click-through links and other annoyances that can frustrate players before they get started.

Here are five things to know about Wordle:

How Did Wordle Start?

Brooklyn, New York, software engineer Josh Wardle dreamed up Wordle — a riff off his last name — to amuse his partner, Palak Shah, who loves word games, and to give them something to do during the pandemic.

Wardle had rolled out the game to his friends in 2013, but they weren’t impressed, according to The Times, so he scrapped it until the pandemic. Shah was “really into” the New York Times Spelling Bee and the paper’s daily crossword puzzle, “so I wanted to come up with a game that she would enjoy,” Wardle said.

Wardle created demand for his game by limiting players to one game a day, which he told The Times created a sense of scarcity and left players wanting more.

About 90 people were playing it on Nov. 1 after the public rollout in October. Now, about 2 million people are playing Wordle.

How Do You Play Wordle?

Go to the Wordle website. A new puzzle is released every day at midnight, and you’ll only be able to play once a day. All players get the same puzzle.

Players get six tries at guessing the five-letter word. When you get a letter right, the letters turn green, yellow or gray to indicate whether it’s in the right spot in the puzzle.

• Green means the letter’s in the right spot.
• Yellow means the letter appears somewhere in the word but isn’t where it should be.
• Gray means the letter isn’t in the puzzle.

How Do You Share Results?

Of course, you want to brag if you've solved the word riddle. And if you haven't, you may want to commiserate. Or, you may just want to build your social capital as someone cool enough to play the game your parents or grandparents had to Google to understand.

Once you finish the puzzle — successfully or unsuccessfully — you’ll be prompted to share your results. Twitter is a popular forum to share your obsession. “Wordle” has been tweeted 1.3 million times since the beginning of the year, a Twitter spokesperson told news station WCCO.

And you don’t have to worry about spoiling the game for others. When sharing on Twitter and other social media platforms, or in a text message, all that is shown a series of yellow, green and gray boxes — the letters you chose aren’t exposed.

What Can ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ Teach You?

Quite a bit, actually, though one of the big differences is that Wordle players don’t get a hint about what the puzzle is about, as they do on the “Wheel” game.

But employing the strategy of RSTLNE — the letters automatically populated in the game show’s bonus round puzzle — can be helpful because those letters make up 45 percent of the words in standard English text.

Using the RSTLNE strategy, a beginner might start out by guessing “rents.” From there, it is a process of deduction that rewards logic and spelling skills.

Vowels Are Free, So Be Free With Them

Use three vowels in your first guess, Mark Serrels and Daniel Van Boom wrote for CNET. Some examples they cited: orate, media, radio and adieu.

Programmer and game designer Tyler Glaiel created a bot to play the game for him to determine the “best possible first guess.” Though the wizardry of programming, he came up with the word “ROATE,” an acronym used in the financial industry to describe return on average tangible equity.

The second-best first guess, Glaiel wrote on Medium, is “raise.”