Adams Media - The Unofficial Wordle Strategy Guide: How to Play—and Win—Everyones Favorite Online Game

The letters A, R, and H are not in the word at all.

Wordle is such a fun, simple, easy-to-learn game that it feels like its been around for years. And yet its only existed in its present form since mid-2021. Its the creation of Josh Wardle, a Wales-born graduate of the media arts program at the University of Londons Royal Holloway school and digital arts graduate of the University of Oregon. Before he came up with the massive game phenomenon known as Wordle, Wardle had already created two other online crazes. While working for Reddit in 2015, he devised The Button, a game where players competed to press a randomly appearing spot on a screen. He followed that up in 2017 with Place, a social experiment (also on Reddit) consisting of a large virtual canvas where, over the course of seventy-two hours, a million people filled in the blank space with digital tiles, including a rendering of the Mona Lisa that more than one hundred people created together.

It Takes Two to Wordle

While Josh Wardle is the sole credited creator of Wordle, Palak Shah provided a crucial developmental step in the game. Wordle initially included virtually every five-letter word in English. After noticing a lot of obscure and outdated words that would be too hard for the average player to guess, Shah narrowed down the word bank to 2,500 wordsenough to provide about seven years of daily Wordle games with no repeats.

But Wordle predates both Button and Place. In 2013, Wardle made a prototype of the game, but his test audience of friends didnt think it was very interesting. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in 2020, Wardle decided to revisit and revamp the game, as a way for him and his partner, Palak Shah, to pass some time while stuck indoors. Wordle was really a gift to Shah, who loves puzzles, including The New York Times daily crossword and Spelling Bee game. As for the name, Wordle conveys instantly that its a word puzzle, but its also a bit of wordplay itselfits a play on Wardles last name.

After playing Wordle for a few weeks, Wardle and Shah decided to share it with friends, relatives, and associates, sending it out via the WhatsApp text-messaging service. That built a test, or beta, audience of about ninety people, which exploded into the hundreds of thousands within two months, right around New Years Day 2022.

Most of that massive growth occurred over the last few weeks in December, after Wardle programmed in the function that let players easily share their game results. This happened after Wardle heard about a player in New Zealand who tweeted her stats with a series of emojis that evoked the gray-yellow-green Wordle game board. Immediately, Wordle users could compare their stats and skills with each other, and every mysterious Wordle results post became free advertising for the free game, propelling its growth.

But what really made Wordle so big, according to its creator, is its wholesomeness. I think people kind of appreciate that theres this thing online thats just fun. Its not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs, Wardle told The New York Times. In a Reddit post, he chalked up the appeal to scarcity, comparing once-a-day Wordle to a croissant: His game is intended to be a delightful snack that would be less charming if it were enjoyed too often.

But Whos Counting?

Wordle Stats (@WordleStats) is a Twitter account that analyzes publicly posted Wordle scores to generate statistics on each daily game. According to their data, about 50 percent of all Wordle players, on average, finish the puzzle on their third or fourth guess. Just about a fifth take five guesses, while 5 to 10 percent nail it on their second or sixth and final guess, and a scant one to three percent of players get it right on the first try.