Taking over the ‘WORDLE’! British software engineer’s online word game attracts thousands
Taking over the ‘WORDLE’! British software engineer’s online word game he invented to play with his wife goes from 90 players to more than 300,000 in MONTH – so have YOU tried it yet?
British software engineer Josh Wardle invented the game Wordle for his partnerHe then shared it with family on WhatsApp before opening it up to the world On November 1, Wordle had 90 players – last weekend, it had more than 300,000
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A word guessing game taking the world by storm was created by a British software engineer for his partner.
Josh Wardle, who lives in Brooklyn and graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2006, created the game Wordle to play with partner Palak Shah.
Having first played the game with Ms Shah, Mr Wardle then shared it with his family on WhatsApp, where it proved so popular that he opened it up to the world.
On November 1, Wordle had 90 players. Last Sunday, more than 300,000 people took part in the daily challenge.
Once a day, the game invites players to guess a five-letter word and, upon submitting their guess, Wordle tells you whether any of your letters are in the secret word and whether they are in the correct place.
Players are then given six attempts to guess what the secret word is.
Josh Wardle, who lives in Brooklyn and graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2006, created the game Wordle to play with partner Palak Shah
Wordle is a daily word game puzzle where users have six attempts to guess the 5 letter word
Mr Wardle, a former software engineer for Reddit, created a similar prototype in 2013 but abandonded it after friends were unimpressed.
However, during the pandemic, he revisited the game, after he and his partner ‘got really into’ the New York Times spelling bee and daily crossword.
It is not the first time that Mr Wardle has created something that has caused a storm online.
In 2015, he created Reddit’s The Button, a bizarre game where a button appeared on a website with a 60-second countdown.
Every time someone pressed the button the clock would reset, but each person could only press it once. Despite there being no prize for clicking it, the simple reward of being able to press it saw millions of people click it.
Now based in New York, Mr Wardle says he enjoys ‘building unique products that focus on human interaction’.
Discussing the success of Worlde, Mr Wardle, told The New York Times: ‘I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun. It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs.’
He added that the game also attracts players because it takes up just three minutes a day.
Mr Wardle said: ‘It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day. And that’s it. It doesn’t want any more of your time than that.’
His partner was the first player to play the game and played a key role in getting it ready for the world
Wordle’s initial list of all of the five-letter words in the English language – about 12,000 – contained obscure words the couple thought would have been near impossible to guess.
Hundreds of thousands of fans are playing Wordle – in which the aim is to guess a single five-letter word known as the ‘Wordle’ within six attempts
Mr Wardle eventually narrowed the list of Wordle words to about 2,500, which should last for a few years.
However, fans have already complained about some words, saying that the words REBUS and TAPIR were not familiar enough.)
Ms Shah says she now wakes up every day to play Wordle. Though it is now shared with the world, she said she appreciated that Mr Wardle originally created it for her.
‘It’s really sweet,’ she said. ‘This is definitely how Josh shows his love.’
