Wordle

About Wordle

Wordle is the viral word guessing game where you have 6 attempts to guess a secret 5-letter word. After each guess, colored tiles show how close you are: green means the right letter in the right spot, yellow means right letter wrong spot. A new word every day!

History of Wordle

Wordle was created by Welsh-born software engineer Josh Wardle as a private gift for his partner, Palak Shah, who loved word games. He built the prototype in 2013 but did not release it publicly until October 2021. The game went viral in late 2021 thanks to its shareable colored-square emoji grid on Twitter. By January 2022, the game had millions of daily players, and the New York Times acquired Wordle for a price reported to be in the "low seven figures." The simple one-puzzle-per-day format became a cultural phenomenon and inspired dozens of spin-off games.

Wordle Tips & Strategies

• 💡Start with a word rich in common vowels and consonants, such as CRANE, SLATE, or ADIEU, to maximize information from your first guess.
• 💡Use your second guess to test different letters rather than building on confirmed ones, to eliminate more of the alphabet.
• 💡Pay attention to letter frequency in English: E, A, R, I, O, T, N, and S are the most common letters in five-letter words.
• 💡When you have yellow letters, think carefully about where they cannot be (their current position) and where they are most likely to fit.
• 💡Avoid guessing obscure or unusual words early; Wordle tends to use common, everyday English words.

Fun Facts About Wordle

• ★The name "Wordle" is a play on the creator's surname, Wardle.
• ★Before selling to the New York Times, Josh Wardle ran Wordle on a simple personal website with no ads or tracking.
• ★Wordle's viral emoji grid format was not designed by the creator but spontaneously invented by a player in New Zealand who shared her results on Twitter.
• ★Linguists have analyzed Wordle strategies and found that the mathematically optimal starting word depends on whether you optimize for average or worst-case performance.

How to Play Wordle

1. 1Type any 5-letter word and press Enter to make your first guess
2. 2Green tiles: correct letter in the correct position
3. 3Yellow tiles: correct letter but in the wrong position
4. 4Gray tiles: letter not in the word at all
5. 5Guess the word within 6 tries to win!

Frequently Asked Questions about Wordle