Wordle Grabbed Us…& It’s Letting Go Soon

It’s going the way of Some Good News.

Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn-based software engineer, created Wordle as a fun game for his partner in October 2021 before releasing it to the public.

According to News National, there were only 90 players by November 1, 2021. 60 days later, that number had risen to 300,000. By the end of January 2022, millions of people were playing the one-puzzle-per-day game and sharing the grids of their success on social media. It certainly didn’t hurt that the New York Times gave Wordle an online shout-out in November.

Wordle 243 6/6 (mine today, 2/17/2022)

⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Since it was just Josh’s gift to his partner, the game uses only US-English spellings and has a bank of 2,315 words that could be the answer.

In January 2022, Wardle said he had no plans to monetize the game.

Wordle’s popularity sprang up quickly. One day, I’d never heard of it. The next, a tsunami of grids covered my Twitter feed. I showed it to my colleagues and we now have a dedicated #wordle channel on Slack to share our daily gridded wins…