Have you been seeing gray, green, and yellow boxes on your timeline recently? Or have you noticed celebrities or your Twitter mutuals tweet some colorful boxes with a caption saying, “Wordle 213 4/6”? Well, that, my friend, is the new game called Wordle that has gone viral and taken the internet by storm. But what is Wordle?
Wordle is an online word game that you can play on your mobile phone for free. The rules of the game are pretty simple. Players are given six chances to guess a five-letter word. If you guess the letter in the right spot, the box turns green. The box turns yellow if the letter is right but in the wrong spot, while it turns gray if the letter isn’t present in any spot. Like a crossword puzzle, everyone is given the same word every day.
Once you’re finished playing the puzzle, Wordle will encourage you to share your results on your social media, which makes a great conversation starter with your fellow Wordle players.
Wordle has become a very popular game with more than 2.5 million users playing it daily, as per Global News. Many celebrities have played the game as well, namely Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and the Lumineers’ band members, Pointless star Richard Osman, The Chase actor Paul Sinha, and Succession actress J. Smith Cameron.
Even Saab Magalona and Vice President aspirant Senator Kiko Pangilinan are joining in to play the viral game.
As if it couldn’t get any better, the viral game had also earned several hilarious tweets from the players. Here are some of the funniest reactions from them:
pivoting to wordle memes pic.twitter.com/ig0MJIEd5o
— angeline rodriguez (@gelrdrgz) January 13, 2022
doing the Wordle at midnight is an important part of making sure I have nothing to look forward to tomorrow
— Django Gold (@django) January 17, 2022
Me staring at my remaining wordle letters after 20 mins and 5 guesses https://t.co/sptCP35ujh
— Jack (@ledzeppjack) January 13, 2022
when you’re on your fifth wordle guess with one yellow: pic.twitter.com/fsOg5ehwUE
— alex (@alex_abads) January 18, 2022
The game Wordle is created by Brooklyn-based software engineer Josh Wardle in October 2021. He said that the game was originally built for his partner who loves to play word puzzles.
“Last year, my partner and I got really into crosswords and word games and I wanted a game for us to play each morning as part of our routine,” Wardle told in an interview with BBC. He then shared the game with his family before sharing it with the public.
Before Wordle became a thing, Wardle had created two experiments that had gone viral as well: The Button (2015) and Place (2017). The Button is a popular game in the Reddit community where a mysterious button would appear with a 60-second countdown. The timer would reset every time the player would press the button.
Meanwhile, the Place is also a Reddit game where a canvas would appear, allowing the users to create and draw art. The game had ended 72 hours later upon its release on March 31, 2017.
If you love Wordle or word puzzles in general, then you should try these games:
Saltong
Saltong is the “Filipino clone of Wordle” that allows players to guess a five-letter word in only six chances. If you guess a letter correctly, the tile turns green. The tile turns orange if the letter is correct but in the wrong spot, and the tile turns gray if the letter isn’t in the word in any spot.
Kitty Letter
Kitty Letter is a free mobile game created by The Oatmeal webcomics and Exploding Kittens creator Matthew Inman which he describes, “Scrabble combined with Clash Royale.”
The premise of the game is that users will unscramble words, and in every word they will create, it is equivalent to armies of cats that will defend the user’s home and attack their opponents’ armies and homes. Thus, the longer the word, the bigger the army.
Words with Friends
Released in 2009, Words with Friends is a multiplayer game that allows users to play solo or challenge their friends in crossword puzzle games. The manner of the game is quite similar to Scrabble where players will take turns to build and create words in a crossword-puzzle style.
UPDATE: The New York Times announced on January 31, 2022, that it has acquired Wordle. The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players.
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