What in the world is Wordle? My love affair with language and word games

By Maya B.

In recent news, a daughter realized something wasn’t right when she didn’t receive her mother’s daily Wordle update. When she went to check up on her, she discovered her mother was being held hostage by a naked assailant. 

There’s a lot to unpack here, but first, rest assured that the situation ended peacefully and the criminal taken into custody. 

This all happened after Rebecca and I had planned for me to write about Wordle, the latest online craze. However, this puts into context just how invested in this word game people are. 

For many, it's become part of their daily routine, like brushing their teeth.

The point of Wordle is to guess the five-letter word of the day in six attempts. Every time you enter a word, the letters either turn green if they’re placed correctly, yellow if they’re in the word but not in the proper location, or stay grey if they aren’t in the word at all. You can try it out here!

It’s a great mind exercise: you use these clues together with the remaining letters to determine the final solution. Your score is complied of how many tries you took to come up with the word, how many games you’ve played consecutively, and your winning percentage. 

I think we can all agree that Wordle’s magic is in its simplicity. It’s available online only. It’s easily accessible, and it’s free. Wordle also has an additional layer to feed our egos — it enables you to share your score (without revealing the solution) with others through text or on social media, as if to say: “Hey, look at me — I’m good at something!” or “I’m a genius,” as some posts online have exclaimed. You can find two similar proclamations on my Twitter profile, but since I’m not a fan of boasting, it took me just over a month to be done with Wordle. It ended there. 

Still confused about what the big fuss is all about? Click here! It does a good job of explaining this online word game that has taken over the planet. 

In fact, earlier this month, The New York Times acquired Wordle. That's how popular this game has become.

Wordle is the brainchild of an American software engineer named Josh Wardle. His love for word puzzles was the motivation behind inventing this game for him and his partner, which they aptly named Wordle. 

After months of them playing it and sharing it with family and friends, his Wordle circle became so obsessed that he decided to put it out into the world. According to a New York Times article from Jan 2022, on Nov. 1, there were 90 people playing it, and by the time the article was written, that number had grown to 300,000!

It is now believed that over two million people are playing it worldwide. I’ve tried my hand at it and have introduced it to friends, and even an English professor. Just today, it appeared in one of my homework assignment folders online. Yes, I have to complete a Wordle as homework (ironically, for my Psychology of Happiness Class.) 

But maybe it’s not that ironic. 

We play games of all kinds because it brings us some level of happiness. I am an avid fan of word and letter games, like Wordle. My favourite one being Wheel of Fortune. 

Though I have no influence in this classic game show, I still sit and yell letters and words to the TV. And I’m usually convinced that I could do better. 

Another favourite, hands down, is Scrabble. I used to sit for hours as a child watching my mom scramble words with her friends, and now I’ve grown to enjoy it, too. Rebecca tells me she loved Boggle — a game that is just as iconic and longstanding. 

My grandmother loved to play Jumble. She’d leaf over to the puzzle page every day in her daily newspaper, and she’d always solve it. 

Why are we so attracted to these games and puzzles? Simply put, they make us happy. When we conquer a challenge, it increases confidence in ourselves and our abilities. It validates us. This positive feedback feeds the ego, and so we become uber pleased. 

This widespread passion for word puzzles is not only enjoyable but also beneficial. Word games are a way for us to expand our vocabulary and language skills, which I’m, of course, a fan of. 

Research shows that these types of games also exercise our cognitive function, keeping our brain young and enhancing our memory, reasoning, and attention skills. 

Even the above-mentioned classic games have been mimicked into fun apps.

Who knows how long Wordle will survive as a craze? That revolving door swings pretty quickly these days, though II have a distinct feeling it will be around for a very long time. If you haven’t tried it, you should, just to see how you fare. Maybe you’ll awaken a new passion or use it as another way to fill five to ten minutes a day. 

I enjoy expanding my language skills, which goes hand in hand with my love of reading. Words are fun, language is fun, and I’m sure you can agree, reading is fun! 

Do you play Wordle? Let us know why you love it here!