The creator of smash-hit free word puzzle game Wordle has talked about the origin of the game, and how it treats the player.
As discovered by The New York Times, Josh Wardle designed the game for his partner, naming it after his own surname. Wardle then introduced it to his family, and later released it online, and now coloured blocks are appearing every day on Twitter.
Playable here, Wordle tasks the player with guessing a word a day, each is five letters and the player has six attempts, with each telling them if a letter is in the word or not, and if they got it in the right place.
I mean, just because EVERYONE else is playing it.
Wordle 197 4/6
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩— Richard Osman (@richardosman) January 2, 2022
Due to the game’s initial very small and limited audience, it wasn’t designed to keep players attention for extended periods of time, instead just a few minutes a day. “It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day, and that’s it,” said Wardle. “Like, it doesn’t want any more of your time than that.”
Wardle also stated that he looked into adding some sort of auto-sharing tool for social media, but he decided that it looked too “trashy” and ruined the grid’s mystery. According to Wardle and his partner, there are currently around 2,5000 Wordle words, narrowed down from around 12,000, meaning the game can currently go for around seven years if desired, although that remains to be seen.
Wardle’s partner, Palak Shah, now gets up every day and warms up with a spelling bee before a game of Wordle, adding that Wardle creating a game for her is “really sweet, this is definitely how Josh shows his love.”
In other news, games industry veteran Ian Livingstone has received a knighthood for his service to video games.