For most of January, I tried to resist. At first, the colorful grids dominating my Twitter feed were just more visual clutter to scroll past. Soon, though, I noticed that the enigmatic squares were being shared like little badges of honor. I had to know more. As soon as I guessed my first word, I was hooked.
There’s a pretty decent chance you’ve already heard of Wordle. The online game — a puzzle that tasks players with working out a mystery word — has quickly become a viral sensation, with around 300,000 players at the start of 2022. By late January, that number had surged to nearly 3 million. It’s been deemed a “drug” and an “obsession,” and was recently bought for at least $1 million by the New York Times. Wordle’s now-iconic grid has been used in ads for Domino’s Pizza and Guinness beer alike. It’s even inspired imitators, like the cheekily-named BRDL, which asks players to guess the correct “banding code,” or four-letter nicknames for birds.
