Wordle is a daily word-guessing video game created by software engineer Josh Wardle and acquired by The New York Times Company in January 2022. Players try to identify a five-letter English word in six attempts, receiving colored feedback after each guess. Its combination of a shared daily puzzle, simple rules, and easily shared results helped it become an international phenomenon in early 2022. The name is a play on Wardle’s surname. (niemanlab.org)
Gameplay
Each guess must be a five-letter word accepted by the game. After submission, its five tiles change color to indicate how the guess relates to the answer:
- Green: the letter is correct and occupies the correct position.
- Yellow: the letter belongs in the answer but occupies a different position.
- Gray: that occurrence of the letter does not match an available occurrence in the answer.
The player wins by entering the answer within six guesses. Unlike a crossword, Wordle provides no definition or thematic clue: the information needed to solve the puzzle comes from the responses to guesses. (gamefaqs.gamespot.com)
Repeated letters require particular care. An answer can contain the same letter more than once, but a guess does not receive more green and yellow matches for a letter than the answer contains. Consequently, a gray tile can indicate an excess copy of a letter rather than its complete absence. For example, if the answer were APPLE, a guess of ALLEY would produce a green A, a yellow first L, a gray second L, a yellow E, and a gray Y. The extra L is gray because the answer contains only one L. (assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com)
The optional Hard Mode requires subsequent guesses to preserve revealed green letters in their positions and include revealed yellow letters. Normal mode permits guesses that do not retain those discoveries, allowing a player to test additional letters even when the test word cannot itself be the answer. (en.wikipedia.org)
Origins and acquisition
Wardle developed Wordle for his partner, who enjoyed word puzzles, before making it publicly available on his website in October 2021. The original version was free and carried no advertising. Its audience expanded rapidly: approximately 90 people played on November 1, 2021, compared with about 300,000 on January 1, 2022. (scientificamerican.com)
On January 31, 2022, The New York Times Company announced its acquisition of the game. The price was not disclosed precisely, but was described as being in the low seven figures. The purchase incorporated an independently developed viral puzzle into the newspaper company’s expanding games business. (niemanlab.org)
Answer selection subsequently became an editorial responsibility. On November 7, 2022, the Times announced Tracy Bennett as Wordle’s dedicated editor and introduced changes to the answer-selection system. (washingtonpost.com)
Daily format and social sharing
Wordle’s standard format offers one new puzzle each day, rather than a continuous sequence of levels. Players receive the same target for a given daily puzzle, making their results comparable without requiring simultaneous play. (scientificamerican.com)
Its sharing feature represents a completed game as rows of colored squares without displaying the guessed words. The resulting pattern communicates the number of attempts and the progression of discoveries while withholding the answer. These compact grids circulated widely on social media during the game’s initial growth. (ttabvue.uspto.gov)
This design distinguishes Wordle’s social interaction from direct multiplayer competition: players solve independently, then compare the traces of their attempts. The common daily target and limited number of guesses provide the basis for that comparison. (scientificamerican.com)
Strategy and mathematical analysis
Wordle can be treated as a process of eliminating possibilities. Each response excludes candidate answers inconsistent with the observed letters, positions, and repetition counts. Solving programs apply an algorithm to select guesses according to objectives such as reducing uncertainty, minimizing the average number of attempts, or avoiding failure within the six-guess limit. Research has used Wordle-like games to compare probabilistic, statistical, and information-theoretic strategies. (arxiv.org)
One approach uses information theory. A proposed guess partitions the remaining answers into groups according to the feedback pattern each answer would produce. A guess is informative when its possible responses tend to distinguish effectively among those answers. This can be measured using information entropy, with the probability of each response determined by the assumed distribution over candidate answers. (arxiv.org)
An informative guess need not be a possible solution. In normal mode, a word chosen principally to test several distinguishing letters may be more useful than guessing similar candidate answers one at a time. Hard Mode restricts this option by requiring the reuse of revealed letters. (en.wikipedia.org)
There is therefore no context-free “best” opening word. Results depend on the permitted guesses, the candidate-answer set, the assumed probabilities of answers, the mode, and the objective being optimized. A strategy evaluated against a particular historical word list does not automatically establish optimal play for every later version of the game. (arxiv.org)
Adaptations and intellectual property
Wordle inspired numerous independent variations, including games based on music recognition rather than spelling. Their connection to Wordle generally lies in a limited sequence of guesses and progressively revealing feedback, rather than affiliation with the original publisher. (apnews.com)
An authorized physical adaptation, Wordle: The Party Game, was announced by Hasbro and New York Times Games in July 2022. It adapts the puzzle into a competitive board game: a host chooses a secret word, other players attempt to identify it, and fewer guesses earn fewer points. Reusable boards permit repeated rounds rather than restricting play to one daily target. (corp.hasbro.com)
Wordle-inspired software has also raised intellectual property disputes. In 2024, the Associated Press reported that the Times had sent copyright takedown notices concerning several projects, citing elements including the Wordle name and its visual presentation. These notices concerned particular implementations and asserted rights; they did not establish that every game using word guesses and colored feedback was unlawful. (apnews.com)
References
- Information Theory Finds the Best Wordle Starting Wordsscientificamerican.com
- Bonus Puzzles - The New York Times Help Centerthenewyorktimeshelpcenter.helpjuice.com
- Wordle game instructionsassets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com
- Wordleen.wikipedia.org
- The New York Times is finally making changes to Wordlewashingtonpost.com
- Using Wordle for Learning to Design and Compare Strategiesarxiv.org
- Hasbro and New York Times Games Are Bringing Wordle to Life in a New Board Gamecorp.hasbro.com