Page protected with pending changes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wordle
Official game logo on The New York Times
Developer(s) Josh Wardle
Publisher(s)Josh Wardle (2021–2022)
The New York Times Games (since 2022)
Platform(s) Browser, Mobile app
ReleaseOctober 2021
Genre(s) Word game
Mode(s) Single-player

Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle. Players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with feedback given for each guess in the form of colored tiles indicating when letters match or occupy the correct position. The mechanics are similar to the 1955 pen-and-paper game Jotto and the television game show franchise Lingo. Wordle has a single daily solution, with all players attempting to guess the same word.

Wardle created the game to play with his partner, eventually making it public in October 2021. The game gained popularity in December 2021 after Wardle added the ability for players to copy their daily results as emoji squares, which were widely shared on Twitter. Many clones and variations of the game were also created, as were versions in languages besides English. Wordle was purchased by The New York Times Company in January 2022 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum and moved to the newspaper's Games section in February.

Gameplay

A four-row grid of white letters in colored square tiles, with 5 letters in each row, reading ARISE, ROUTE, RULES, REBUS. The A, I, O, T, and L are in gray squares; the R, S, and E of ARISE, U and E of ROUTE, and U and E of RULES are in yellow squares, and the R of ROUTE, R and S of RULES, and all letters of REBUS are in green squares.
Wordle game #196 solved in 4 guesses
Text saying "Wordle 196 4/6", followed by four lines of five emoji boxes each: white, yellow, white, yellow, yellow; green, white, yellow, white, yellow; green, yellow, white, yellow, green; green, green, green, green, green.
The emoji grid copied by sharing the result from the Wordle game.

Every day, a five-letter word is chosen which players aim to guess within six tries. [1] After every guess, each letter is marked as either green, yellow or gray: green indicates that the letter is correct and in the correct position, yellow means it is in the answer but not in the right position, while gray indicates it is not in the answer at all. [2] Multiple instances of the same letter in a guess, such as the "o"s in "robot", will be colored green or yellow only if the letter also appears multiple times in the answer; otherwise, excess repeating letters will be colored gray. [3] The game has a "hard mode" option, which requires players to include letters marked as green and yellow in subsequent guesses. [4] The daily word is the same for everyone. [5] The game also has a dark theme as well as a high-contrast theme for colorblind accessibility, which changes the color scheme from green and yellow to orange and blue. [4] [6]

Conceptually and stylistically, the game is similar to the 1955 pen-and-paper game Jotto and the game show franchise Lingo. [7] [8] [9] [10] The gameplay is also similar to the two-player board game Mastermind—which had a word-guessing variant Word Mastermind [11] [12]—and the game Bulls and Cows, with the exception that Wordle confirms the specific letters that are correct. [13] [14] [15]

Each daily game uses a word from a list of 2,309 words. [16] The smaller word list was chosen by Wardle and his partner by filtering down lists she made by categorizing all the five-letter words into those she knew, those she did not know, and those she might have known. [17] Wordle uses American spelling, and players outside the US have complained that this spelling convention gives American players an unfair advantage (e.g., the use of "favor" rather than the non-US "favour"). [18] [19] [20] [21]

According to data collected by The New York Times, the most common first guesses are "adieu", "audio", "stare", "raise", and "arise". [22] [23] However, it was found that starting words such as "adieu" and "audio" may put people at a disadvantage as it takes more attempts for people to solve than if they start with words such as "slate". [24] Computer algorithms can solve the puzzle with 100% accuracy within 5 of the 6 allowed guesses. [25]

History

Early development

Wardle created the prototype of Wordle in 2013, inspired by the color-matching game Mastermind. [26] [27] The prototype allowed players to play puzzles consecutively, and its wordlist was unfiltered. [17] At first the game used all 13,000 possible five letter words in the English language, but he found that his partner Palak Shah had difficulty recognizing some of the less common words and made the guessing as haphazard as it was in Mastermind. He then used Shah as a simple filter to trim down the word list to around 2,000 words that were more recognizable – roughly five years of puzzles on a daily basis. [26] After finishing the prototype around 2014, Wardle lost interest and set the prototype aside. [26]

In the meantime, Wardle created the two online social experiments The Button and Place while working for Reddit. [13] [26] When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, he and his partner "got really into" The New York Times' Spelling Bee and daily crossword puzzle. [13] [17] Wardle recalled his Wordle prototype and was inspired by two elements from Spelling Bee to flesh out the prototype further: the simple-to-use website design for the puzzle, and the limitation of one puzzle per day. By January 2021, Wardle had published Wordle on the web, mostly shared with himself and his partner. He had named it Wordle as a pun on his surname. [13]

Rise in popularity

Later he shared it with his relatives, where it "rapidly became an obsession" for them. [13] [26] Over the next few months, he continued to share the Wordle website with other close friends, leading to the viral spread of attention to the puzzle by mid-October 2021. [26] In one case, he found that it had become popular with a group of friends in New Zealand, where they had created the emoji-style display of the guesses which they shared with friends, which inspired Wardle to incorporate the feature into the game. [28] [17] After he had added this feature, the game became a viral phenomenon on Twitter in late December 2021. [29] [2] [30] A Gale-published article even claims that "Wordle is less about winning and more about the friends we make along the way" due to the new ease of sharing. [31]

Over 300,000 people played Wordle on January 2, 2022, up from 90 players on November 1, 2021, [13] a figure that rose to over 2 million a week later. [32] Between January 1 and 13, 1.2 million Wordle results were shared on Twitter. [28] Several media outlets, including CNET and The Indian Express, attributed the game's popularity to the dailiness of the puzzles. [33] [2] Wardle suggested that having one puzzle per day creates a sense of scarcity, leaving players wanting more; he also noted that it encourages players to spend only three minutes on the game each day. [13] He also noted some subtler details about the game, such as the game's keyboard changing to reflect the game state, as reasons for players' enjoyment. [17] He had said that he has no intention to monetize the game and "It's not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs ... It's just a game that's fun." [34] [27] In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today, Wardle stated that he does not know each day's word so he can still enjoy playing the game himself. [35]

Separately, an entirely different game called Wordle! by Steven Cravotta, which had been released on the App Store five years prior to Wardle's Wordle, saw a boost in downloads and purchases from people who thought it was Wardle's game; according to Cravotta, between January 5 and 12, 2022, his game was downloaded over 200,000 times. [36] [37] Cravotta was glad to see his game's resurgence, though recognized purchasers were likely buying it thinking it was Wardle's Wordle. In collaboration with Wardle, he donated $50,000 from revenues to Boost in Oakland, California, a charity providing tutoring to Oakland schoolchildren. [38] [39]

Google Search created an Easter egg when one searches for "Wordle", with the site's logo becoming an animated game of Wordle to find the word "Google". [40] To prevent play from being spoiled, Twitter took action to block an auto-reply bot that replied to any Wordle result post with the next day's word. [41]

Acquisition by the New York Times Company

On January 31, 2022, the New York Times Company, the parent company of The New York Times, acquired Wordle from Wardle for an "undisclosed price in the low-seven figures." [42] According to Wardle, the sudden attention he and his partner had gotten over the previous few months had made them uncomfortable, and also he did not feel like spending the effort to fight against clones of Wordle that were appearing. Wardle said that "It felt really complicated to me, really unpleasant", and that being able to sell the rights to Wordle made it easy "to walk away from all of that." [26] Jonathan Knight of the Times games department contacted Wardle on January 5, 2022, two days after Wordle was featured in a Times article. With the acquisition by January 31, chief product officer Alex Hardiman said "I don’t think I’ve ever seen us move on an acquisition this fast." [43] Vanity Fair reported that the Times had just edged out The Washington Post in acquiring the game. [43]

The Times intended to add the game to its mobile app alongside its crossword puzzles and Spelling Bee, seeking to bring in digital subscribers up to 10 million by 2025. The Times stated the game would initially remain free to new and existing users and that no changes would be made to its gameplay. [42] [44] [45] Fans expressed worries that the acquisition meant the game would eventually be put behind a paywall. [46] As the game operates entirely using client-side Javascript code run in the browser, some players have downloaded the webpage for offline use due to fears that the New York Times Company would modify the game undesirably. [47] [48]

On February 10, the game was officially moved to The New York Times's website, with statistics carrying over; however, some players reported that their daily streaks reset after the switch. [49] The Times producers did not want to change any significant parts of Wordle except for two facets, moving the game to work in React so that it could be integrated with the Times online games app, and adding support for users to log in with their Times account as another way to track progress. [50]

As part of the move, the Times eliminated some possible word guesses that they felt were insensitive or offensive terms such as "slave" and "lynch" so as to "keep the puzzle accessible to more people", and also eliminated some British spelling variants such as "fibre". [51] The Times had also changed planned words in response to current events as to keep Wordle separate from the news. In May 2022, the solution word "fetus" was removed following the leaked draft decision in abortion-related United States Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, to keep the game separate from the news. [52] As of July 2022, a total of seven words have been removed from the original 2,315 Wordle answers. Because of these deletions, the Times version of Wordle is now out of synchronization with cached or saved versions of Wordle, making it difficult for players of the two versions to compare their solution scores. [51] By August 24, 2022, the New York Times Crossword app was updated to include Wordle, with player progression still synced between mobile and desktop versions. [53]

On April 7, WordleBot was launched by the New York Times to give players information about how they completed their Wordle on that day, giving a luck and skill rating. [16] Some users felt that the WordleBot responses became patronizing and insulting as the analysis of a player's completed puzzle progressed. [54]

According to the Times quarterly earnings report ending on March 31, 2022, the acquisition of Wordle brought "tens of millions" of new players to the Times puzzle site and app, many of whom continued to play the other puzzles offered by the Times. [55] Editors in the Times games department called the following months the "Hot Wordle Summer" due to further increases in players on their games app resulting from Wordle. [43]

Editor

In November 2022, the Times employed a dedicated editor, Tracy Bennett, to select the word of the day from a curated list. [56] [57] Speaking in January 2023 to Today she explained that the words are initially selected by a random system but she then checks each word for suitability. She eliminates those "if there are any, like, secondary meanings that are maybe either profane or derogatory", and she checks "to see if there's anything that would make one of those words feel more hurtful or insensitive than normal." Bennett also avoids words which are difficult to find because they have four letters in common with many other words, such as "found" where there are eight options for the first letter. The words that otherwise cause most complaints has been unfamiliar terms such as " parer", " Rupee" and the US-specific " condo". [58] Bennett did introduce the notion that the word can be connected to the day where it is the solution, such as "BEGIN" the day Bennett started, "MEDAL" on Veteran's Day (November 11), or "FEAST" on Thanksgiving (November 24). This type of theme or connection was not present in Wardle's original word list. The change was not appreciated by everybody, such as Slate's Lizzie O'Leary, who prefers Wordle to "stay hard and weird." [59]

Usage

Wordle was the top Google search term globally and by American users in 2022. [60] [61] Because of the popularity of Wordle, Google searches from players looking to find out the definition of Wordle answers affected top Google search trends. Seven of the top 10 searched-for word definitions in 2022 were Wordle answers, including cacao, homer, canny, foray, trove, saute and tacit. [60] [62]

At the March 2023 Game Developers Conference, New York Times producer Zoe Bell shared data on the influence of Wordle to other Times online games. Player count for Wordle under the Times had peaked around March 2022, and while that has gone down, levels remained resilient to about half that count a year later. Importantly for the Times, the impact of Wordle has shown a growth in interest in the other games that the Times offers, with daily player counts continuing to grow as of March 2023. [50]

Adaptations and clones

After Wordle's sudden popularity at the start of 2022, a number of clones appeared. Some of these revised the game logic in novel ways. Absurdle, created by British programmer qntm, is an adversarial version in which the target word changes after each guess, while remaining consistent with previously revealed hints. [63] Other clones retain the game's mechanics while changing the word list. These clones range from translations into other languages to guessing swear words in Sweardle and NFL players in Weddle. [64] [65] Wordle has been ported to older hardware, including GameBoy Wordle for the Nintendo Game Boy, [66] Wordle DS for the Nintendo 3DS [67] and a Nokia N-Gage port. [68]

Other games used the "-le" suffix to indicate a connection with Wordle, even with significant gameplay differences. These include Semantle, where players try to find a word that is semantically similar; [69] [70] Redactle, in which a Wikipedia article has most of its text redacted until the player guesses enough words to deduce the article's subject; [71] [72] Squabble, in which Wordle is a battle royale; [73] and Waffle, in which players organize scrambled letters in a five-by-five grid into six different words. [74] The game has also helped popularize a variety of non-word games, such as Worldle, where players must identify a country or territory by its silhouette: text-based hints give the direction and distance from the wrong location to the target answer; [75] Heardle, a Wordle-style game based on identifying songs, which was acquired by Spotify for an undisclosed sum in July 2022; [76] Nerdle, where players must solve an 8-digit calculation involving numbers and math symbols; and Framed, where players must identify a film from a short clip. Other variants involve solving multiple Wordle-like puzzles at once. For example, Quordle, where players tackle four word puzzles simultaneously, was purchased by Merriam-Webster in January 2023 for an undisclosed sum. [77]

A number of ad-supported Wordle clones appeared on Apple's App Store in early January 2022, but did little to alter the formula, even using the game's name. [78] Users continued to seek out other Wordle clones on the App Store, and by the end of January, nearly all of the clones had been removed. [79] The New York Times filed an application to register a trademark for Wordle shortly after acquiring it to help protect the intellectual property, [80] [81] and has been using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to issue takedown notices against source code repositories on GitHub that enabled simple clones of Wordle. [82]

Languages

Shortly after gaining viral popularity among English-speaking users in January 2022, Wordle was adapted into other languages. An open-source version of the basic Wordle game was created by Hannah Park and modified by linguist Aiden Pine to handle other character sets, making the game amenable to more languages. [83] Pine also has a free step-by-step blog explaining how to create your own Wordle. [84] By February 2022, at least 350 variants of Wordle had been documented on the website "Wordles of the World". These include at least 91 versions based on real languages, including historical and regional dialects of some languages, indigenous languages, languages without alphabetic writing systems (such as Chinese chengyu and American sign language), and constructed languages such as Klingon. [85] [86]

Others

The New York Times and Hasbro partnered to create Wordle: The Party Game, a board game based on browser video game. It is a variant for two to four players, in which one player selects a secret word each round for other players to guess, following Wordle rules. The game was released in October 2022. [87] [88] Polygon's Charlie Hall described the physical game as a "cut-and-paste job" simply replicating the online game's mechanics without enhancing it for multiple players as a party game. [89]

See also

References

  1. ^ Astle, David (December 31, 2021). "Tips from an expert: How to solve everyone's favourite game Wordle". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on December 30, 2021. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c Tech Desk (December 21, 2021). "Wordle: All about the viral game Twitter is going bonkers over". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on January 1, 2022. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
  3. ^ Gularte, Alejandra (January 21, 2022). "A Guide to Wordle, Twitter's Favorite Game". Vulture. Archived from the original on February 7, 2022. Retrieved February 7, 2022.
  4. ^ a b Lyons, Kim (January 20, 2022). "How to play Wordle". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved January 20, 2022.
  5. ^ Carpenter, Nicole (December 29, 2021). "What is Wordle? A viral word game everyone's playing". Polygon. Archived from the original on December 30, 2021. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
  6. ^ Pisani, Joseph (January 19, 2022). "What Is Wordle? How to Play the Viral Word Game and Tricks to Impress Your Friends". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved January 20, 2022.
  7. ^ Brocklehurst, Harrison (January 4, 2022). "What the hell is Wordle, and why is Twitter full of people tweeting coloured squares?". The Tab. Archived from the original on January 4, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  8. ^ Jackson, Gita (January 5, 2022). "Why Is Everyone Tweeting Their 'Wordle' Scores?". Vice. Archived from the original on January 5, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  9. ^ Van Stam, Tom (January 5, 2022). "Woordspel Wordle is binnen een mum van tijd een van de populairste games ter wereld" [In no time, word game Wordle has become one of the most popular games in the world]. IGN Benelux (in Dutch). Archived from the original on January 6, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  10. ^ Orland, Kyle (January 12, 2022). "Wordle and IP law: What happens when a hot game gets cloned". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  11. ^ Gallaga, Omar L. (January 25, 2022). "What to Play When You're Not Playing Wordle". Wired. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on February 1, 2022. Retrieved February 1, 2022.
  12. ^ Pisani, Joseph (January 31, 2022). "Wordle Has People Digging Out Old Games. Mastermind or Jotto, Anyone?". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Retrieved February 19, 2023. Jan. 31, 2022 9:00 am ET Wordle fans are returning to childhood games including Mastermind, which tests players' logic skills using color codes, similar to what Wordle does with words and letters.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Victor, Daniel (January 3, 2022). "Wordle Is a Love Story". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 5, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  14. ^ Barbaschow, Asha (December 22, 2021). "Wordle: It's Like Mastermind but for Words". Gizmodo Australia. Archived from the original on January 17, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  15. ^ Astle, David (December 31, 2021). "Tips from an expert: How to solve everyone's favourite game Wordle". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on December 30, 2021. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  16. ^ a b Katz, Josh; Conlen, Matthew (April 7, 2022). "Introducing WordleBot, the Upshot's Daily Wordle Companion". The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  17. ^ a b c d e Holliday, Nicole; Zimmer, Ben (January 19, 2022). "Wordle's Creator Thinks He Knows Why the Game Has Gone So Viral". Slate. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  18. ^ Kolirin, Lianne (February 9, 2022). "American spelling on Wordle fails to raise a smile among Britons". The Times. Archived from the original on February 12, 2022. Retrieved February 12, 2022.
  19. ^ Hassan, Jennifer (January 13, 2022). "Wordle sparks transatlantic rift as Brits denounce American English spelling of 'favor'". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on January 13, 2022. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  20. ^ Blackburn, Jack (January 12, 2022). "Wordle puzzle provokes war of words with American spelling". The Times. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  21. ^ Hampson, Laura (January 12, 2022). "Twitter reacts to realising Wordle uses American spelling". The Independent. Archived from the original on February 2, 2022. Retrieved February 2, 2022.
  22. ^ Amlen, Deb (August 23, 2022). "What's Your Favorite Starting Word in Wordle?". The New York Times. ISSN  0362-4331. Retrieved September 7, 2022.
  23. ^ Amlen, Deb (September 1, 2022). "Few Wordle Players Use Consistent Starting Words, but When They Do, It's ADIEU". The New York Times. ISSN  0362-4331. Retrieved September 7, 2022.
  24. ^ Katz, Josh; Bhatia, Aatish (December 17, 2023). "Seven Things We Learned Analyzing 515 Million Wordles". The New York Times. ISSN  0362-4331. Retrieved March 11, 2024.
  25. ^ Anderson, Benton J.; Meyer, Jesse G. (February 1, 2022). "Finding the optimal human strategy for Wordle using maximum correct letter probabilities and reinforcement learning". arXiv: 2202.00557 [ cs.CL].
  26. ^ a b c d e f g Mackovich, Sam (March 25, 2022). "Wordle creator describes game's rise, says NYT sale was "a way to walk away"". Ars Technica. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  27. ^ a b Wakefield, Jane (January 5, 2022). "Wordle creator promises viral game will stay simple and ad-free". BBC News. Archived from the original on January 5, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  28. ^ a b Cao, Steffi; Dahir, Ikran (January 15, 2022). "How A Group Of Twitter Colleagues Blew Up Wordle". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on January 16, 2022. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
  29. ^ Lum, Patrick (December 23, 2021). "What is Wordle? The new viral word game delighting the internet". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 31, 2021. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
  30. ^ Price, Renata (December 30, 2021). "Wordle Is That Square Grid Game You've Been Seeing All Over Social Media". Kotaku. Archived from the original on December 30, 2021. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
  31. ^ Mumu, Aaron (February 16, 2022). "'Wordle is less about winning and more about the friends'". UWIRE Text: 1.
  32. ^ Hall, Rachel (January 11, 2022). "Wordle creator overwhelmed by global success of hit puzzle". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 11, 2022. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
  33. ^ Serrels, Mark (December 21, 2021). "WTF is Wordle? Everything to know about the new word game craze". CNET. Archived from the original on January 1, 2022. Retrieved December 31, 2021.
  34. ^ "Wordle: why the inventor of the fiendishly addictive online game doesn't want your money". The Guardian. January 4, 2022. Archived from the original on January 4, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  35. ^ Today (Radio programme). BBC Radio 4. January 5, 2022. Segment starting 1:24:43. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  36. ^ Cravotta, Steven [@StevenCravotta] (January 12, 2022). "came across my app, also conveniently named Wordle" ( Tweet) – via Twitter.
  37. ^ Stanton, Rich (January 17, 2022). "Older game called Wordle hits the jackpot, creator donates the windfall to charity". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  38. ^ Sheridan, Conner (January 14, 2022). "He made a different game called Wordle 5 years ago and now he's donating the profits". GamesRadar. Archived from the original on January 14, 2022. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
  39. ^ Florian, Amanda (February 24, 2022). "When Wordles collide: 'Wordle!' developer donates $50,000 after old app goes viral by accident". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  40. ^ Molina, Brett (January 21, 2022). "This is what happens when you Google 'Wordle'". USA Today. Archived from the original on January 22, 2022. Retrieved January 21, 2022.
  41. ^ Clark, Mitchell (January 24, 2022). "Twitter suspends Wordle-ruining bot". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 24, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2022.
  42. ^ a b Benveniste, Alexis (January 31, 2022). "The Sudden Rise of Wordle". The New York Times. ISSN  0362-4331. Archived from the original on February 2, 2022. Retrieved February 2, 2022.
  43. ^ a b c "Inside the New York Times' Big Bet on Games". Vanity Fair. December 19, 2023.
  44. ^ Tracy, Marc (January 31, 2022). "The New York Times Buys Wordle". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 31, 2022. Retrieved January 31, 2022.
  45. ^ Korn, Jennifer (January 31, 2022). "The New York Times buys popular word game Wordle". CNN. Archived from the original on January 31, 2022. Retrieved February 1, 2022.
  46. ^ Mukherjee, Supantha; Datta, Tiyashi (February 1, 2022). "Wordle buyout by New York Times draws backlash from fans". Reuters. Archived from the original on February 1, 2022. Retrieved February 1, 2022.
  47. ^ Hollister, Sean (February 1, 2022). "Wordle will be free forever because you can right-click to save the whole game". The Verge. Archived from the original on February 1, 2022. Retrieved February 2, 2022.
  48. ^ Stanton, Rich (February 2, 2022). "Folks are 'saving' six years of Wordle before the NYT messes with it". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on February 2, 2022. Retrieved February 2, 2022.
  49. ^ Carpenter, Nicole (February 10, 2022). "Wordle players are losing their streaks after NYT migration". Polygon. Archived from the original on February 10, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  50. ^ a b Orland, Kyle (March 24, 2023). "How The New York Times managed to avoid ruining Wordle". Ars Technica. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
  51. ^ a b Vincent, James (February 15, 2022). "The New York Times has changed Wordle's solutions". The Verge. Archived from the original on February 15, 2022. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
  52. ^ Woodyatt, Amy. "New York Times drops 'fetus' as Wordle solution". CNN. Retrieved May 9, 2022.
  53. ^ "Wordle snags a place inside the New York Times Crossword app". August 24, 2022.
  54. ^ Mauran, Cecily (April 7, 2022). "NYT's new 'WordleBot' will passive-aggressively insult your strategy". Mashable. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  55. ^ Pierce, David (May 4, 2022). "Buying Wordle brought 'tens of millions of new users' to The New York Times". The Verge. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
  56. ^ Peters, Jay (November 8, 2022). "Now Wordle has an editor in charge of picking the next answer". The Verge. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  57. ^ Orland, Kyle (November 12, 2022). "How "Wordle editor" became a real job at The New York Times". Ars Technica. Retrieved November 12, 2022.
  58. ^ Clements, Erin (January 10, 2023). "Wordle editor Tracy Bennett reveals what words get the most complaints". news.yahoo.com. Retrieved January 29, 2023.
  59. ^ O'Leary, Lizzie (November 30, 2022). "The New Wordle Editor Is Ruining Wordle". Slate. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  60. ^ a b "Wordle: The most Googled word globally and in the US in 2022". BBC News. December 7, 2022. Retrieved December 8, 2022.
  61. ^ Archie, Ayana (December 8, 2022). "These are the words, movies and people that Americans searched for on Google in 2022". NPR. Retrieved December 8, 2022.
  62. ^ "Wordle is 2022's top Google search term, above both Ukraine and the queen". Washington Post. ISSN  0190-8286. Retrieved December 8, 2022.
  63. ^ Winkie, Luke (January 13, 2022). "Absurdle: the machiavellian version of Wordle". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  64. ^ Smith, Graham (January 11, 2022). "Absurdle is a Wordle variant that hates you – while Sweardle curses you". Rock Paper Shotgun. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
  65. ^ Johnson, Lottie Elizabeth (April 7, 2022). "Super Bowl champ Eric Weddle has his own Wordle spinoff. The NBA and NHL have spinoffs, too". Deseret News. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  66. ^ "Someone put 'Wordle' on the Game Boy". Engadget. February 7, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
  67. ^ "Here's What Wordle Looks Like On a 3DS". Game Rant. March 11, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
  68. ^ "Wordle Comes To The Nokia N-Gage Thanks To New SDK". Hackaday. April 8, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
  69. ^ Rizzo, Tim (April 4, 2022). "Semantle is like the Dark Souls of Wordle". Washington Post. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
  70. ^ Cadenas, Cesar (April 6, 2022). "Semantle is the Wordle clone that will have you pulling your hair out". TechRadar. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
  71. ^ "Redactle is a brutal plot for Wordle that can take you hundreds of guesses". Game News 24. April 20, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
  72. ^ "Redactle is like Wordle crossed with Wikipedia and I'm hooked". Tom's Guide. April 21, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
  73. ^ Livingston, Christopher (February 14, 2022). "Wordle, inevitably, has been turned into a battle royale". PCGamer. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
  74. ^ Jain, Sourabh (April 18, 2022). "Waffle is a new word game that takes Wordle to the next level". businessinsider.in. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
  75. ^ Timsit, Annabelle (February 16, 2022). "Meet Worldle, the geography guessing game its creator calls a 'tribute' to Wordle". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 11, 2022.
  76. ^ Welsh, Oli (July 13, 2022). "Spotify buys Heardle, the Wordle for music lovers". Polygon. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
  77. ^ Holt, Kris (January 20, 2023). "'Quordle' has a fitting new owner as Merriam-Webster buys the 'Wordle' clone". Engadget. Retrieved January 22, 2023.
  78. ^ Clark, Mitchell (January 11, 2022). "The App Store clones are here to profit off Wordle's success". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
  79. ^ Clark, Mitchell (January 11, 2022). "The Wordle clones have disappeared from the App Store". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
  80. ^ Huddleston Jr., Tom (February 24, 2022). "Wordle kind of rips off an old game show: A copyright lawyer explains why that's OK". CNBC. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  81. ^ WORDLE, ser. no. 97/248,806 (filed February 1, 2022). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Status & Document Retrieval. Accessed May 4, 2022.
  82. ^ Weatherbed, Jess (March 8, 2024). "The New York Times is targeting Wordle clones with legal takedowns". The Verge. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  83. ^ Egan-Elliott, Roxanne (February 1, 2022). "'Another way to reawaken the language': Word game Wordle adapted for Indigenous languages". Vancouver Sun. Archived from the original on February 4, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2022.
  84. ^ Grower, Sheila (2022). "'Wordle' word game assisting old languages". Prairie History (8): 130 – via Ebscohost.
  85. ^ Graham-Harrison, Emma; Milmo, Dan (February 5, 2022). "Urdu, Chinese, even Old Norse: how Wordle spread across the globe". The Guardian. Archived from the original on February 5, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2022.
  86. ^ Lokot, Tanya (February 5, 2022). "'Your'dle: Wordle is now available in many of the world's languages". Global Voices. Archived from the original on February 5, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2022.
  87. ^ Egan, Toussaint (July 14, 2022). "Wordle is getting an official party game". Polygon. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  88. ^ Paul, Mathures (October 25, 2022). "'Wordle: The Party Game' now available offline". The Telegraph. Kolkata. Retrieved October 31, 2022.
  89. ^ Hall, Charlie (November 4, 2022). "The Wordle board game is a joyless, lazy knockoff of the hit digital game". Polygon. Retrieved November 6, 2022.

External links