Wordle has taken the world by storm and is now one of the most popular games around. As with many great tales, Wordle’s invention is actually a love story. Josh Wardle, a software engineer living in New York, made Wordle because he and his girlfriend enjoyed playing crossword puzzles. He wanted to make a new game that the couple could enjoy together.
Incremental change can be as powerful as revolutionary change. Wordle is very similar to a pen-and-paper game Jotto and a U.S. television game called Lingo. Wordle brought similar concepts to the digital screen, making it convenient and fun for folks on their smartphones and computers.
While Wordle draws influence from classic games, it distinctly and intentionally avoids many of the most common video game conventions leveraged by modern gaming companies and Silicon Valley. Many games these days try to get players to spend long hours gaming with endless gameplay loops. All the while, gamers might be bombarded with ads and in-game purchases.
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Not Wordle. While designing the game, Wardle intentionally avoided ads and also limited puzzles to just one game per day. This way, people could have fun without becoming addicted or pressured into buying other stuff. You can log on, play your Wordle once a day, and then get on with life.
A few months back, the New York Times bought Wordle. While exact details of the purchase haven’t been made public, the Times said that it paid a low seven figure price. For the Times, the game offers a fun new digital way to carry on the legacy of the company’s famous crossword puzzles, which still appear in print and also online.
There are plenty of copycats, but the original can be found at: https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle
