There’s a new trend sweeping the nation and if a person has yet to hear about it, they would probably be lying. But on the off chance that they are telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they’re in luck because all the information can be found here. 

Wordle, a word game created by a man named Josh Wardle in October of 2021 for his wife, has captured the attention of nearly 2 million people worldwide. It’s overall a simple game, but remains capturing enough to keep people playing the one round allotted per day. This is for at least two reasons. 

The first being that many people enjoy the challenge, but that it’s easy enough to be successful every round. Anyone can play as long as they know the rules and some five letter words. It makes people feel accomplished and almost everyone likes feeling successful at least once a day. Not only that but if the same browser is used from round to round, the statistics of each one will be saved. So it’s easy to see improvement and streaks. 

The second reason is that it creates a community. With nearly everyone falling in love with Wordle so fast, there’s bound to be heavy conversation about it. People compare their stats and ask each other how many guesses it took for that word. This especially works since everyone gets the same word every day. Except for once but that was only because Wordle had been bought by the New York Times for about 3 million dollars and the domains were switching over. The New York Times changed some of the words to both prevent offensive words from being the answer and to get rid of the impossible ones. On the first day that a word was different, some people happened to be on the old domain while others were already switched over. So some people got “agora” and others got “aroma”. 

One thing noted to be incredible about the whole conversation though, is that there is this unspoken agreement that formed where anyone can share their little colored boxes that represent their personal round, but no one is allowed to tell other people the word. And so far it hasn’t become a huge thing to spoil that for people which gives some points to humanity. 

The game itself may appear confusing without an explanation, but once it’s understood it’s easy to grasp and play everyday with every other Wordle fan. It starts with a blank grid of 5 x 6. Now the first step is to put any word in as long as it’s a real one and it’s five letters long.  People tend to like the words “irate”, “arose”, “audio”, and “adieu” because they provide common consonants and cram a lot of vowels in. Once it’s entered in, the game will tell the player which letters are not in the word by coloring them gray, which letters are in the word but not the correct location by coloring it yellow, and which letters are right where they need to be by coloring it green. Then the player starts guessing. Some people have a second word they always use to keep putting out letters but that’s not as common. These include the words “ship”, “built”, and “stormy”. Finally the player just keeps guessing at the word, making the necessary adjustments based on the output of the game. They must get it in six guesses or less, and the faster they get it the better. 

If this sounds like fun, just type wordle in your browser and get to playing!