Thanks for Wordle, Mr. Wardle

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I’m not quite an early adopter on this, but I have been playing Wordle since Saturday, January 8. I heard about it on a podcast that previous week - the lovely story about Josh Wardle who created a word puzzle game for his partner - and then spent the next day and a half playing an app called Wordle, and not really understanding it.

Ohhhh, it’s just a website!?! Nice!

Every since then, I’ve played every morning. Often, it is the first thing I do upon picking up my phone for the first time every morning.

Here’s why I loved the game:

  • It’s just a website, nothing to download

  • No registration needed

  • No ads

  • It’s only one game each day

  • It’s a shared experience; everyone gets the same game

It was that last point that really did it for me. That, and the things that come along with that… the “social contract” that most people upheld. Sure, some people didn’t know they were spoiling it for others when they posted the completed screen shot, rather then results that obfuscated the answer, but there were very few jack-wagons out there that aimed to spoil it for the masses (very few, but there were some that took it to a whole new level).

And even though there were some that complained about people posting their scores (Side note: wow! You know you can pretty much curate what you see, right? And, also, scroll.) I loved going on Twitter in the morning to see how people scored! Especially the day that the answer was “KNOLL”.

There were the knock-offs, from versions with swear words, lewd words, and even, gasp, math! But none of them worked as simply and reliably as Wordle.

It was announced today that Josh Wardle has sold Wordle to the New York Times for “seven figures”. I want to be disappointed since I don’t subscribed to the New York Times so I can’t read anything or play the crossword puzzle (which I could never finish anyway), but I choose to be thrilled for Mr. Wardle. He created something wonderful and should get paid for it!

It’s not worth gambling on, but if I had a bunch of chips in front of me I would go all-in on the bet that it will never be as fun as it was before. I can already hear the snark already… “Oh, don’t you miss when Wordle was simple and fun? Like, last week.”

Congratulations, Mr. Wardle.